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Jazz Articles about Satoko Fujii
Satoko Fujii Quartet: Live At Jazz Room Cortez
by Karl Ackermann
As prolific as Satoko Fujii is, she has never sacrificed quality for quantity. With a half-dozen leader/co-leader releases in just the past year, no two albums have conveyed redundancy, and none have fallen short of her serious artistic standards. Following the live sessions that led to Satoko Fujii's solo recording Invisible Hand (Cortez Sound, 2017), the pianist/composer was invited back to Jazz Room Cortez in Mito, Japan for a group performance. Two extended pieces from Fujii's repertoire were chosen for ...
Continue ReadingSatoko Fujii: Aspiration
by Franz A. Matzner
A descent into minimalist precision and emotive texture, Satoku Fuji's Aspiration bequeaths listeners with the depths of creativity that stems from residing on the edge of the avant-garde for decades. Which is precisely where music pioneers pianist Fuji, long-time trumpet partner Natsuki Tamura, electronica experimentalist Ikue Mori, and innovator Wadada Leo Smith remain.The album's six pulsating compositions are the result of the collaboration between these four artists as conceived by Fuji, but were born out of the participants ...
Continue ReadingSatoko Fujii: Aspiration
by Dan McClenaghan
The teaming of pianist Satoko Fujii with trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, both artists possessed of unwavering and uncompromising artistic visions, comes to life with Aspiration. Trumpeter Natsuki Tamura, Fujii's husband and musical partner is here too, as is laptop/electronics wizardess, Ikue Mori, making it a quartet of iconoclasts. Smith and Tamura, two of the most unconventional trumpeters on the scene, players who often explode into wildly “outside" territory, explore here--and this has always been a part of their ...
Continue ReadingSatoko Fujii / Wadada Leo Smith / Natsuki Tamura / Ikue Mori: Aspiration
by Karl Ackermann
The soul of Gato Libre, and the glue that holds numerous global jazz orchestras together, are in the musical and personal partnership that has mastered creative music in a variety of formations and settings. Satoko Fujii and Natsuki Tamura are prolific and boundless and Aspiration is the latest of their more than sixty recordings together. Aspiration credits Fujii as the album's leader, by virtue of her contributions as the primary composer. Joining Fujii and Tamura are the legendary trumpeter/composer Wadada ...
Continue ReadingSatoko Fujii / Natsuki Tamura: Kisaragi
by Karl Ackermann
As creative pairings go, there are none who surpass trumpeter Natsuki Tamura and pianist Satoko Fujii. The husband and wife team play together in various settings from Fujii's numerous orchestras (New York, Berlin, Tokyo), the quartet Kaze, and the (now) trio formation Gato Libre. The results are never predictable. Their duo outings, more often than not, lean toward quirky lyricism. On Kisaragi, their fifth such recording, the duo opts for improvised abstractions where the emphasis is on unusual sounds.
Continue ReadingSatoko Fuji: Invisible Hand, Trouble Kaze: June, Satoko Fujii Orchestra Tokyo: Peace
by Giuseppe Segala
Tre recenti realizzazioni discografiche della pianista Satoko Fujii mettono in evidenza quanto l'ampio ventaglio della sua ispirazione sia in continuo fermento, coniugando la sperimentazione di nuovi organici strumentali allo scandaglio di tecniche compositive e improvvisative, in una rete di contrasti che danno forma a un ampio affresco in costante movimento. In particolare, emerge il lavoro in piano solo dei due CD che compongono Invisible Hand, dove si ha modo di saggiare una dimensione intima, che scava in varie direzioni con ...
Continue ReadingTrouble Kaze: June
by John Sharpe
In its original form, the French-Japanese collective Kaze was already a novel proposition, with the double trumpet spearhead of Natsuki Tamura and Christian Pruvost allied to Satoko Fujii's piano and Peter Orins' drums. But on June, the novelty quotient ratchets up a notch further with the doubling of the piano and drum set. That the additional pianist is Sophie Agnel, renowned for her exploration of the piano as a sound generation device, piques the interest yet further. Rather than the ...
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