In the smallish interior of Aketa no Mise, it often seems as if the band takes up half the club, but when Satoko Fujii brought her entire orchestra, it was literally true. The first row of chairs was taken out and customers' knees bumped against the music stands. As leader, Fujii had to stand in the aisle; she didn't even try to get back to the piano in the corner; the trumpeters were packed in there. Atmosphere isn't everything, but it ups the energy. The sound really resonated and become a different experience altogether from a fully-miked, large hall. The biggest band ever to fit in the club (so said the master) played big-sized, intriguing music, very up-close.
The Orchestra is an institution in Tokyo, and also in New York, where a mirror-image orchestra also convenes. The Tokyo orchestra is filled out with some of the most cutting-edge and individualistic players in the city. Starting the evening out with "Jet Lag," the band got right into it. They stood up for soloing-but-not-completely-soloing in rotating pairs, shedding structures and constraints. The members play with each other and against each other in equal measures, creating waves of harmonic conflict and not-quite-resolution. Still, they all rose higher and higher to what was definitely a musical climax, together in spirit if not in structure.
Following with the suite "Four Seasons," the band had to leave out the "Aki" section, since the instrumentation was new to the evening, but the other three seasons flowed swirls of feeling touched with a distinctive Japanese tonality. The three seasons captured a wide range of images, dense with sensual, sonic urges, half-fulfilled rhythmic desires and the intensity of the seasons.
"No More" by Natsuki Tamura started out with martial drums. The half-heard hints of "Charge" and "Reveille" and other army songs emerged in hints of melody from inside a building tide of sound. Tamura, as leader and composer, directed the band less into the music than into their own human reactions. Then, each of the army songs seemed to fold in on top of itself, as if it could only be supported and played by military-minded musicians. Finally, the military musical lines became increasingly humanized, as if a line of soldiers had thrown down their weapons one by one and gone home. The final, mournful bass line struck home with power.
The second set started out with a new song, powerfully layering sounds from each of the band's sections. The start of ascending lines, though, was always answered by other parts of the band moving in different directions and digging into lively counter-rhythms. The complexity of the tunes, though, always resolved into all-together tones with a full-on punch, that never gave up the intricate feel of different sections seeming to climb up on top of each other to the top of the mix. The evening ended with a humorous take on the "Batman" theme song, or rather, the theme song as almost completely reinvented with energy and wit.
Fujii and her Orchestra are never less than amazing. What makes them so special is the energy of all the musicians, first, and the creative directions they allow themselves to take. Each evening spent with them, whether knee-to-knee with the front line, or in more spacious venues, is always a great and intense musical experience.
