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Jazz Articles about Satoko Fujii
Satoko Fujii / Joe Fonda / Gianni Mimmo: Triad
by Mark Corroto
It's difficult to cherry pick recordings from pianist Satoko Fujii's 60th-year birthday celebration releases that are coming at us every month in 2018. There are solo recordings, sessions with her various jazz orchestras, duos, trios and quartets. Can you pinpoint her as a composer, arranger, or improviser? Yes, yes, and yes. She's accomplished in every aspect of jazz, from free to noted and folk to avant-garde. Her creative energies burn as brightly as that of David Murray in the 1990s, ...
Continue ReadingThis Is It!: 1538
by Dan McClenaghan
Pianist/composer Satoko Fujii's June 2018 edition of her CD-release-a-month celebration of her sixtieth birthday introduces a new trio, called This Is It!. The group's debut recording takes its name from the Celsius melting point of iron. The group is a variation on the Satoko Fujii New Trio, a piano trio that released the excellent Spring Storm (Libra Records, 2014). The new configuration replaces bassist Todd Nicholson with trumpeter Natsuki Tamura. Fujii and drummer Takashi Itani remain. The music ...
Continue ReadingThis Is It!: 1538
by Karl Ackermann
At the half-way point of Satoko Fujii's year-long celebration of her sixtieth birthday, she presents a new trio configuration--This is It!--with familiar figures. Her sixth of twelve releases for the year is titled 1538 and features her almost ubiquitous musical partner and spouse Natsuki Tamura and drummer Takashi Itani. The significance of the title lies in Fujii's wish to convey the imagery of intense heat and 1538 degrees Celsius is the temperature at which iron melts. It's safe to say ...
Continue ReadingSatoko Fujii: Triad
by Karl Ackermann
Triad is the fifth of twelve monthly albums to be released as part of pianist-composer Satoko Fujii's extended celebration of her sixtieth birthday. It is also her second album with the legendary American bassist Joe Fonda. Duet (Long Song Records, 2016), recorded live in Portland, Maine in 2015, had brought the pair together at Fonda's request though the two were barely familiar with each other's music. Despite the album title, one of the two tracks included Fujii's trumpeter husband Natsuki ...
Continue ReadingKira Kira: Bright Force
by Glenn Astarita
Kira Kira's otherwise all-Japanese lineup includes Australian keyboardist Alister Spence to round out a topsy-turvy experimental soundscape with lateral movements, surging improv, cascadinging keys and free-spirited flareups. Renowned pianist and composer Satoko Fujii and her associates explore a multidimensional territory with avant-garde extremism combined with structured song-forms or themes, and brashly enacted polyrhythms supplied by drummer Ittetsu Takemura. Fuji's husband and frequent collaborator, Natsuki Tamura's agile and power-packed trumpet is in full-force with typically brisk phrasings and edgy shadings.
Continue ReadingKira Kira: Bright Force
by Karl Ackermann
Pianist Satoko Fujii was playing for the Sydney Improvised Music Association in 2007 when she first crossed paths with composer/keyboardist/effects artist Alister Spence. Kindred spirits in terms of boundless musical interests, their initial collaboration took place in 2008 after their respective groups shared the stage at the Tokyo Jazz Festival. Later that year, the two recorded as part of The Raymond MacDonald International Big Band on Buddy (Textile Records, 2010). That group included Fujii's trumpeter husband Natsuki Tamura and accounts ...
Continue ReadingKira Kira: Bright Force
by Dan McClenaghan
The label “music" may be too confining for these sounds. Let us call it an ear-opening sonic experience. That's what pianist Satoko Fujii, with her new group, Kira Kira, has created with a compelling recording called Bright Force. In the year 2018, every review of Fujii's output will include a prelude describing her decision to release an album per month, in celebration of her sixtieth birthday. She does know how to throw a dynamic and distinctive celebration.
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