Satoko Fujii Orchestra Tokyo: Kappa Ondo

Stepping into the sounds of a Satoko Fujii big band performance is like slipping into an alternate universe. It is an odd sonic world, full of odd surprises. The pianist/composer has chosen 2026 to release five orchestral albums, each featuring a different ensemble. Fujii has been ambitious, consistently so, over a 30-plus-year career. Kappa Ondo is her fifth and final large ensemble recording of this project.

The Kappa Ondo universe has its origins in a song written by trumpeter Natsuki Tamura's father, Ichiji Tamura—a special needs educator, a novelist, a painter and a tunesmith. Trumpeter Tamara is Fujii's husband and her musical cohort. The title tune, the elder Tamura's posthumous contribution to this sprawling two CD set, closes the show. Working off an IC recorder audio Natuski Tamara's father had sent to him, Tamura the younger shared the sound with Fujii, who then transcribed the score. With the tune in hand, Fujii decided to arrange the piece for the orchestra and make it the focus of the double album, which included pieces that had been subjects of the elder Tamura's paintings—foxes, stray cats, and Jizo statues.

Fujii's orchestral albums are indeed portals into alternate universes. Kappa Ondo is not an exception. It is doubling down on her and Tamura's flexible approach to writing and arranging for large ensembles. There are moments of majesty and there are interludes of sparkling reflection; solos blossom—intricate improvisational inspiration reflecting the concepts set forth by Fujii and Tamura. Group cacophonies swell up; strident brass harmonies wail. Sonic tides ebb, then reverse and rise with implacable force. Rip currents surge; small eddies form up and swirl. Cyclonic gales toss the crashing waves.

When the composition and the arrangement were finished, Fujii, as the appointment in the studio loomed, found herself dissatisfied with her arrangement of the title tune. She went to her keyboard and began inputting notes into her music software, working with a frantic intensity that, as Tamura describes in his liner notes, "[It seemed as if] ideas were pouring from her so quickly that steam was practically flowing from her head."

A familiarity with Fujii's recorded output over her 30-year career reveals a progression of her artistry. The flames from her head (Tamura muses) as she again rewrote the new arrangement of Ichilji Tamura's song that she had accidentally deleted (computers: you cannot live with them; you cannot live without them) is a believable image of the ever-ambitious and intense Fujii putting the finishing touches on Kappa Ondo, her finest orchestral album since Fukushima (Libra Records, 2017).