Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Satoko Fujii: Stone

12

Satoko Fujii: Stone

Satoko Fujii: Stone
There is something reassuring in Satoko Fujii's solo work, even in its most distant forms. While the pianist and composer doesn't repeat the past, the unexpected character of her music is itself the Fujii brand. In a 2018 All About Jazz interview, she spoke of her desire to create music never heard before. With Stone, she continues to conceive the inconceivable while remaining entertaining and thought provoking.

Stone consists of fifteen relatively short pieces, many using multiple parts of the piano. The meditative "Trachyte" is a ghostly drone, sprinkled with calculatingly placed notes, and sounding electronically enhanced, though it is not. "Biotite" clatters inside the instrument, the noise in stark contrast to snippets of melody. The beautiful "River Flow" is one of the few austere pieces without experimentation. There are great variations in mood. "Lava" is dark and rumbling, "Shale," with its plucked strings, is a tone piece, and "Piemontite Schist," abstract and constantly shifting. Fujii closes the session with the slow-paced "Eternity," an elegiac conclusion to a collection that holds together remarkably well given its multiplicity of sounds.

On the heels of her twelve-album, sixtieth birthday project in 2018, speculation about following up on that extraordinary achievement was left to pundits. For Fujii herself, "next" is not an issue to be overthought; her self-awareness includes trusting that concepts will develop in due time. If they ultimately do not satisfy Fujii, as a composer or musician, they are shelved, knowing that a better idea is not far off. That confidence is a large part of what makes an album like Stone successful.

Track Listing

Obsius; Trachyte; Biotite; River Flow; Shale; Phonolite; Lava; Icy Wood; Piemontite Schist; Chlorite; Basalt; Sand Stone; Marble; Ice Waterfall; Eternity.

Personnel

Satoko Fujii: piano.

Album information

Title: Stone | Year Released: 2019 | Record Label: Libra Records

Tags

Comments


PREVIOUS / NEXT




Support All About Jazz

Get the Jazz Near You newsletter All About Jazz has been a pillar of jazz since 1995, championing it as an art form and, more importantly, supporting the musicians who make it. Our enduring commitment has made "AAJ" one of the most culturally important websites of its kind, read by hundreds of thousands of fans, musicians and industry figures every month.

Go Ad Free!

To maintain our platform while developing new means to foster jazz discovery and connectivity, we need your help. You can become a sustaining member for as little as $20 and in return, we'll immediately hide those pesky ads plus provide access to future articles for a full year. This winning combination vastly improves your AAJ experience and allow us to vigorously build on the pioneering work we first started in 1995. So enjoy an ad-free AAJ experience and help us remain a positive beacon for jazz by making a donation today.

More

Tramonto
John Taylor
Ki
Natsuki Tamura / Satoko Fujii
Duality Pt: 02
Dom Franks' Strayhorn
The Sound of Raspberry
Tatsuya Yoshida / Martín Escalante

Popular

Old Home/New Home
The Brian Martin Big Band
My Ideal
Sam Dillon
Ecliptic
Shifa شفاء - Rachel Musson, Pat Thomas, Mark Sanders
Lado B Brazilian Project 2
Catina DeLuna & Otmaro Ruíz

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.

Install All About Jazz

iOS Instructions:

To install this app, follow these steps:

All About Jazz would like to send you notifications

Notifications include timely alerts to content of interest, such as articles, reviews, new features, and more. These can be configured in Settings.