It becomes harder to review each Satoko Fujii release not because there are so many of them but because each one maintains such consistently high quality. She is prodigious in her output, but naturally so, each time signaling she still has a lot more music in her head to come. Each one of her recordings is less about hearing new songs than reentering the next stage of her musicality.
Of course, her songs do fall into song divisions, but there is more connection between her different songs than separation. They seem to be less complete, finished products, than an embrace of the process. Whether in a large group ensemble or a tightly focused quartet, her music is wild, pushy and energized. Like some musical rock climber, she looks for chinks and handholds in the cliff face that have never been grasped before, and then hoists herself and the other members up to the next sonic terrain.
Fujii’s music, both the roughly designed large group work and the more intense quartet work, taps into levels of improvisational grace that are endlessly fascinating. Whatever background music might be, this is its opposite. She forces you not just to listen, but to listen differently, to be placed into a new relation to the forces of improvised sound, and beyond that, to the very notion of improvisation. That means the listener must listen with an inner capacity for spontaneity, openness and pleasure. The music calls those qualities out of the listener with vitality and humor. Expect the unexpected and you get it, only in even more unexpected ways!
On both of these recordings, Fujii’s music is infused with complex ironies. Her music juxtaposes opposites. She sets rapid shifts in tone next to change-ups in tempo and new emotional directions. The tone can shift suddenly, the tempo scatter in several directions at once and the emotions pull against each other powerfully. The contrasts, though, always show her pleasure in following the music where it wants to go. The enthusiasm is infectious. She pushes the contradictions of jazz--the more controlled certain points become the more free the overall feeling, the more virtuosic the playing the stronger the simple parts, the more broadly conceived the deeper the music can go.
These recordings also showcase intriguing musicians. They have come together to play Fujii’s music not because they aren’t busy themselves, most lead their own hard-to-define groups, but because it is a collaboration of expression and learning. Their collaborations are a constant source of astonishment and satisfaction. Trumpeter Tamura, of course, is always part of the process, and his trumpeting has never sounded better than on these two releases. Fujii’s piano playing bursts through the center of both recordings with fiercely felt energy. And because all this is so intriguingly well done, it’s hard not to like the rollercoaster zing of every tune.
