Satoko Fujii Quartet: Burning Wick

Japanese pianist Satoko Fujii is prolific. She has released well over 100 albums in a 30-year career, including a notable stretch in 2018 when she released an album a month. Solo piano outings, duo sets—including several with her husband, trumpeter Natsuki Tamura—trios, quartets, and larger ensembles of every size and shape. A general rule with Fujii: the larger the ensemble, the louder and more brazen the sounds. Her big bands are often particularly riotous.

But her small ensembles can be just as powerful. The word 'brazen' brings us to the Satoko Fujii Quartet, the group that released five albums between 2001 and 2007. Then they took a break for almost 20 years, coming out of the dormancy in 2024 with Dog Days of Summer (Libra Records). And they came out with guns blazing, in a take-no-prisoners mode. That is the way this quartet rolls, with high energy that mixes the sounds of fusion jazz with thrash and crash heavy metal and a 'get out of our way' momentum.

One year after that return to form, 2025 sees another Satoko Fujii Quartet album: Burning Wick. It is a more spacious affair than any of its predecessors, offering the band more room for nuance and intricate interplay. Which brings us back to 'brazen.' That aspect is still there, but there are also more allowances for contemplation. It is much less in your face, but is rather a 'stop and listen' experience made for a start- to-finish listening experience of music it has never heard before. But still, there are moments of hurricane force sounds that blow the folding chairs back against the auditorium's rear walls.

Tamura is here, sounding almost mainstream in his approach, or like a Spanish trumpeter winding down after the bullfight, playing with a pure and elegant tone, playing his part of the fanfare by himself. Electric bassist Hayakawa Takeharu gives the sound a substantial heft, and drummer Tatsuya Yoshida often sounds like a half a dozen workmen trying to hammer the red tiles back on the roof,

The 12-plus-minute "Walking Through the Border Town" opens with an ominous drone, followed by a wordless banshee vocal segment. Tamura, on trumpet, enters, followed by the strident rhythm section. The quartet walks through this town with heads high, jaws jutting. The vatos hanging in the shadows stay where they as the quartet passes and shifts into an introspective mode.

The previous Satoko Fujii Quartet albums all contain fury and forcefulness, a knock-down-the-walls energy. Burning Wick is less overtly calamitous, featuring more intricate moments, more complex beauty and nuance, with Fujii displaying moments of gorgeous, classical music-influenced beauty. And there is more solo space for everyone, space that is arranged deftly, without a hint of a lessening of the overall group dynamic.

Burning Wick is not a return to form for the Satako Fujii Quartet. It is a step forward. A big one. The best of the group's recordings to date.