MacDonald/Fujii/Davidson/Tamura/Bancroft

Cities
Nu-Jazz NJGLO59-2

Larry Ochs Sax & Drumming Core

Stone Shift

RogueArt Rog-0025

Nearly ubiquitous internationally – or so it often appears – keyboardist Satoko Fujii and trumpeter Natsuki Tamura are as likely to be found playing with their American combos or big bands as with a variety of other groups located in their Tokyo hometown.

Open to more musical experiences then those where they call all the shots, husband-and-wife Tamura and Fujii, who plays piano, synthesizer and accordion, may join other groups for short or extended periods. These superior CDs, recorded two years apart, demonstrate their adaptability. Cities results from a two-day Glasgow gig that joined the two with a trio of Scottish improvisers –saxophonist Raymond MacDonald, guitarist Neil Davidson and drummer Tom Bancroft – all of whom are as omnipresent in that city’s music scene as Tamura and Fujii are internationally.

Stone Shift is another matter. Together since the beginning of the century, saxophonist Larry Ochs and dual drummers Donald Robinson and Scott Amendola extend the textures of their Sax & Drumming Core band by adding Tamura and Fujii on a regular basis. Ochs, who wrote all the tunes here, now has more colors for his compositional palate, while making the band name slightly vestigial.

This is especially obvious on the title tune, subtitled “For Kurosawa” – doubtlessly honoring the Japanese director. After the two percussionists move spectrally across the sonic space with thumping patterns reminiscent of Taiko drumming, Tamura’s whinnying tremolos appear in double counterpoint with Ochs’ harsh, near-swallowed reed textures. Fujii plays a dual role – something that may have appealed to Kurosawa – alternating skittering synthesizer pedal point with organically thick piano runs. As the tune slithers along, and both of her keyboards move in a portamento fashion, strangled cries and capillary growls drop from the trumpet, matched by thin, almost-Asiatic repetitive trills from Ochs’ soprano sax. Finally the horns encapsulate their variations by intermingling squeezed reed chirps and burbling brass cries. All the while rough cymbal echoes, rattling snares and spacious rebound from Robinson and Amendola shore up the bottom. Finally, a wash of near-vocal synthesizer textures complete the aural picture.

The introductory “Across From Over”, which clocks in at more than 19 minutes, delineates all this and more, as the resonating cracks, ruffs, slaps and retorts from the dual drummers begin to suggest African and Native American percussion patterns. One man echoes Pharoah Sanders’ percussion-heavy forays of the 1960s, while the other suggests the Universal Indians motifs of the Ayler brothers’ percussionists of around the same time. In fact, intentionally or not, spluttering split tones at the top of Ochs’ range ejaculated with a tough tenor-styled thickness recall Albert Ayler’s soloing, while the trumpeter’s sluicing triplets and bent, whinnying notes are reminiscent of Donald Ayler’s limited style. “Across From Over” shouldn’t be confused with a period-piece salute however. Fujii’s two-handed synthesizer flutters and swift piano glissandi are definitely of this century though, while the tactile press rolls, breakneck ruffs, cross-patterning flams and polyrhythmic time dislocation from the drummers confirms the CD’s 21st Century origin.

Also very much in this century, and a testament to Scottish improvisers new-found sophistication, is Cities. Using only acoustic instruments – except for electric guitar – the nine tracks confirm how seamlessly Fujii’s and Tamura’s skills blend with those of others. Overall, the only downside here would be that the keyboardist’s familiarity with the inner working of the piano and its strings are such that it’s sometimes difficult to pinpoint guitarist Davidson’s contributions in the mix. A further anomaly is that a burst of applause at the end of one track is the only one heard – an odd juxtaposition for a session recorded at Glasgow’s Centre for Contemporary Arts.

Davidson’s below-the-bridge sweeps and angular picking are obvious on “Two Blocks East” where they join with Fujii’s walking bass line and peal point pressure. As her patterning becomes thicker and louder, it’s contrapuntally challenged by reed bites from MacDonald and tremolo tongue motions from Tamura. Bancroft’s drumming has already accelerated from gentle sand-dance-like strokes to thick, resounding thumps in order to match the saxman’s masticated tones. Now the narrative foreshortens to make room for cawing reed lines, vibrating trumpet flourishes, guitar string snaps, pummeled piano runs plus hard ruffs and strokes from the drums. Turning moderato, repeated trumpet measures bring the band back to earth.

Weighty and frail timbres figure into other instant compositions, such as “Oxygenitis” and “Overload”. On the former Fujii’s sharp key stabs accompany light-toned flutters and lyrical vibrations from MacDonald, who almost sounds like a modernistic, Glaswegian Stan Getz here. Furthermore, his delicately tongued alto work includes constructing a buzzing obbligato to Tamura’s whirring grace notes. Then as Bancroft ruffles his drum tops, the pianist splatters note textures and yanks jagged asides from the instrument’s nether regions. More of the same, “Overload” features Fujii’s heavy chording moving crab-like on one line, as MacDonald and Tamura follow a parallel path in double counterpoint. The saxophonist irregularly vibrates and squeaks, while the trumpeter wah-wahs. This ends with both cascading notes. While Davidson’s occasional plinks add an additional sound layer, Bancroft’s rebounds and rumbles keep the improvisational edifice balanced.

Throughout these and the other tracks, the quintet runs through a litany of high and low frequency reed slurs, kinetic chording, internal piano string plinks, brass mouthpiece kisses and any manner of metronomic or broken-time strategies from the drummer. The cumulative results range from shrill to smooth, but few sounds are less than remarkable.

Extending their range and collaborations further, Tamura and Fujii prove that a mixed Japanese-Scottish session is only a bit les memorable than one featuring simpatico Japanese and American players.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Stone: 1. Across From Over 2. Abstraction Rising 3. Stone Shift (for Kurosawa)

Personnel: Stone: Natsuki Tamura (trumpet); Larry Ochs (tenor and sopranino saxophones); Satoko Fujii (piano and synthesizer) and Donald Robinson and Scott Amendola (drums)

Track Listing: Cities: 1. Navigation 2. Parallel Shapes 3. Overload 4. A Strange Prediction 5. Two Blocks East 6. Into the Diversion 7. Oxygenitis 8. How did I get Here 9. Euphoria

Personnel: Cities: Natsuki Tamura (trumpet); Raymond MacDonald (alto and soprano saxophones); Satoko Fujii (piano); Neil Davidson (guitar) and Tom Bancroft (drums)

February 16, 2010

Larry Ochs Sax & Drumming Core

Stone Shift
RogueArt Rog-0025

MacDonald/Fujii/Davidson/Tamura/Bancroft

Cities

Nu-Jazz NJGLO59-2

Nearly ubiquitous internationally – or so it often appears – keyboardist Satoko Fujii and trumpeter Natsuki Tamura are as likely to be found playing with their American combos or big bands as with a variety of other groups located in their Tokyo hometown.

Open to more musical experiences then those where they call all the shots, husband-and-wife Tamura and Fujii, who plays piano, synthesizer and accordion, may join other groups for short or extended periods. These superior CDs, recorded two years apart, demonstrate their adaptability. Cities results from a two-day Glasgow gig that joined the two with a trio of Scottish improvisers –saxophonist Raymond MacDonald, guitarist Neil Davidson and drummer Tom Bancroft – all of whom are as omnipresent in that city’s music scene as Tamura and Fujii are internationally.

Stone Shift is another matter. Together since the beginning of the century, saxophonist Larry Ochs and dual drummers Donald Robinson and Scott Amendola extend the textures of their Sax & Drumming Core band by adding Tamura and Fujii on a regular basis. Ochs, who wrote all the tunes here, now has more colors for his compositional palate, while making the band name slightly vestigial.

This is especially obvious on the title tune, subtitled “For Kurosawa” – doubtlessly honoring the Japanese director. After the two percussionists move spectrally across the sonic space with thumping patterns reminiscent of Taiko drumming, Tamura’s whinnying tremolos appear in double counterpoint with Ochs’ harsh, near-swallowed reed textures. Fujii plays a dual role – something that may have appealed to Kurosawa – alternating skittering synthesizer pedal point with organically thick piano runs. As the tune slithers along, and both of her keyboards move in a portamento fashion, strangled cries and capillary growls drop from the trumpet, matched by thin, almost-Asiatic repetitive trills from Ochs’ soprano sax. Finally the horns encapsulate their variations by intermingling squeezed reed chirps and burbling brass cries. All the while rough cymbal echoes, rattling snares and spacious rebound from Robinson and Amendola shore up the bottom. Finally, a wash of near-vocal synthesizer textures complete the aural picture.

The introductory “Across From Over”, which clocks in at more than 19 minutes, delineates all this and more, as the resonating cracks, ruffs, slaps and retorts from the dual drummers begin to suggest African and Native American percussion patterns. One man echoes Pharoah Sanders’ percussion-heavy forays of the 1960s, while the other suggests the Universal Indians motifs of the Ayler brothers’ percussionists of around the same time. In fact, intentionally or not, spluttering split tones at the top of Ochs’ range ejaculated with a tough tenor-styled thickness recall Albert Ayler’s soloing, while the trumpeter’s sluicing triplets and bent, whinnying notes are reminiscent of Donald Ayler’s limited style. “Across From Over” shouldn’t be confused with a period-piece salute however. Fujii’s two-handed synthesizer flutters and swift piano glissandi are definitely of this century though, while the tactile press rolls, breakneck ruffs, cross-patterning flams and polyrhythmic time dislocation from the drummers confirms the CD’s 21st Century origin.

Also very much in this century, and a testament to Scottish improvisers new-found sophistication, is Cities. Using only acoustic instruments – except for electric guitar – the nine tracks confirm how seamlessly Fujii’s and Tamura’s skills blend with those of others. Overall, the only downside here would be that the keyboardist’s familiarity with the inner working of the piano and its strings are such that it’s sometimes difficult to pinpoint guitarist Davidson’s contributions in the mix. A further anomaly is that a burst of applause at the end of one track is the only one heard – an odd juxtaposition for a session recorded at Glasgow’s Centre for Contemporary Arts.

Davidson’s below-the-bridge sweeps and angular picking are obvious on “Two Blocks East” where they join with Fujii’s walking bass line and peal point pressure. As her patterning becomes thicker and louder, it’s contrapuntally challenged by reed bites from MacDonald and tremolo tongue motions from Tamura. Bancroft’s drumming has already accelerated from gentle sand-dance-like strokes to thick, resounding thumps in order to match the saxman’s masticated tones. Now the narrative foreshortens to make room for cawing reed lines, vibrating trumpet flourishes, guitar string snaps, pummeled piano runs plus hard ruffs and strokes from the drums. Turning moderato, repeated trumpet measures bring the band back to earth.

Weighty and frail timbres figure into other instant compositions, such as “Oxygenitis” and “Overload”. On the former Fujii’s sharp key stabs accompany light-toned flutters and lyrical vibrations from MacDonald, who almost sounds like a modernistic, Glaswegian Stan Getz here. Furthermore, his delicately tongued alto work includes constructing a buzzing obbligato to Tamura’s whirring grace notes. Then as Bancroft ruffles his drum tops, the pianist splatters note textures and yanks jagged asides from the instrument’s nether regions. More of the same, “Overload” features Fujii’s heavy chording moving crab-like on one line, as MacDonald and Tamura follow a parallel path in double counterpoint. The saxophonist irregularly vibrates and squeaks, while the trumpeter wah-wahs. This ends with both cascading notes. While Davidson’s occasional plinks add an additional sound layer, Bancroft’s rebounds and rumbles keep the improvisational edifice balanced.

Throughout these and the other tracks, the quintet runs through a litany of high and low frequency reed slurs, kinetic chording, internal piano string plinks, brass mouthpiece kisses and any manner of metronomic or broken-time strategies from the drummer. The cumulative results range from shrill to smooth, but few sounds are less than remarkable.

Extending their range and collaborations further, Tamura and Fujii prove that a mixed Japanese-Scottish session is only a bit les memorable than one featuring simpatico Japanese and American players.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Stone: 1. Across From Over 2. Abstraction Rising 3. Stone Shift (for Kurosawa)

Personnel: Stone: Natsuki Tamura (trumpet); Larry Ochs (tenor and sopranino saxophones); Satoko Fujii (piano and synthesizer) and Donald Robinson and Scott Amendola (drums)

Track Listing: Cities: 1. Navigation 2. Parallel Shapes 3. Overload 4. A Strange Prediction 5. Two Blocks East 6. Into the Diversion 7. Oxygenitis 8. How did I get Here 9. Euphoria

Personnel: Cities: Natsuki Tamura (trumpet); Raymond MacDonald (alto and soprano saxophones); Satoko Fujii (piano); Neil Davidson (guitar) and Tom Bancroft (drums)

February 16, 2010

Joachim Kühn & Michael Wollny

Live at Schloss Elmau
ACT Music 9758-2

Satoko Fujii-Myra Melford

Under the Water

Libra Records 202-024

While for many the idea of dual piano duets may conjure up unfortunate visions of unchallenging background sounds from Ferrante and Teicher or alternately Billy Joel and Elton John camping it up, this communication among equals has a long history in so-called classical music and latterly in jazz. Neither of the duos here though could be confused with other well-known jazz twofers, such as those created by boogie-woogie stylists Pete Johnson and Albert Ammons, mainstreamers Hank Jones and Tommy Flanagan – or with each other. But each brings something characteristic and exceptional to the hoary concept.

Musical questing soloists, composers and bandleaders born within a year of one another, Satoko Fujii and Myra Melford initiated this session after meeting a couple of years ago and discovering common musical ground. If there are musical differences among the two, they are that the Japanese-born Fujii participates in a variety of configurations from duo to big band, while American Melford, who is now teaching at the University of California, Berkeley, has led mid-sized combos, but never a big band.

Born geographically closer, Germans Joachim Kühn and Michael Wollny are more widely separated chronologically with the former 64 and the latter 31. Kühn, who was one of the first musicians from then East Germany to make his mark on the international jazz scene, has played with everyone from fusion drummer Billy Cobham to alto saxophone visionary Ornette Coleman. Wollny, who wrote his diploma thesis on Kühn’s manner of improvisation, also gained the older pianist’ respect for his playing. This exceptional meeting, in fact, is one of the few situations that Kühn has shared with another pianist during his long career.

Centrepiece of their four duos and two solo pieces is “Hexentanz”, a Wollny composition written to showcase both men. Overall here, and during the other duos, interaction ranges from dynamic and lyrical to methodical and literal. Despite a variety of tempo changes throughout, the duo most impressively rises to the occasion when ponderousness is put aside for presto interface.

Strumming chords and cross handed pulsations enliven the sonic landscape. Yet as the two build a synchronous edifice of splayed note clusters, the internal architecture is too often on display. When staccato cadenzas are slowed down to andante, the gait turns processional, as one pianist occupies himself with low-frequency clicks and clanks – sometimes from the soundboard itself – while the other introduces soothing note clusters. Eventually the fantasia climaxes in a dynamic crescendo of note flurries.

Still something appears missing.

That fissure becomes more apparent during Kühn’s “Seawalk” and the duo’s subsequent encore. Consonant chords predominate, so that the feeling is more 19th Century than 21st. Baroque echoes are as often obvious as modal improvisations. Closely attuned enough so that any passing theme advanced by one player is immediately picked up on and amplified by the other pianist, this double-think has other drawbacks as well. Any wide sonic space left by one player is almost immediately plugged with kinetic cadenzas by another busy pair of hands as if any measure of silence is suspect.

Less closely attuned, Fujii and Melford benefit from preserving their own metaphorical breathing space during their three duos – the CD also includes a solo by each. On “The Migration of Fish” for instance, each takes a turn plucking sounds from within the piano, then alternate yanking strings – or what sounds like rolling a metal ball through the mechanism – with a legato keyboard fantasia that’s softer and more lyrical. Their polytonal exploration also involves passing chord formations from one to the other while simultaneously creating palindromes. Extending the dynamics by adding textures from temple bell and castanets, each is able to assert herself properly. You never doubt that two separate minds are at work.

This is unmistakable on the other Fujii-Melford duets as well, even though, like an old married couple finishing each other’s sentences, often one player begins a phrase and the other complete it. Still on the other hand, “Yadokari” is another illustration that simpatico doesn’t have to mean indistinguishable. Structurally, one pianist outputs a series of cumulative glissandi while the other produces abrasive string scrubs as if she was playing a guzheng. Able to move from staccato to languendo runs in an eyelid blink, theme variations from Fujii and Melford are appropriately syncopated as well as descriptive.

Those who admire other work of Wollny or especially Kühn, may rate Live at Schloss Elmau higher, and there’s no disputing that both men have commanding technique. But in the final analysis, that CD is fundamentally a record of exceptional piano playing. Under the Water on the other hand is a luminous session of outstanding piano improvising.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Under: 1. Yadokari 2. Trace a River 3. The Migration of Fish 4. Be Melting Snow 5. Utsubo

Personnel: Under: Satoko Fujii and Myra Melford (pianos)

Track Listing: Live: 1. The Colours of the Wind 2. Hexentanz 3. Elmau 4. Chaconne 5. Seawalk 6. Encore

Personnel: Live: Joachim Kühn and Michael Wollny (pianos)

July 29, 2009

Satoko Fujii-Myra Melford

Under the Water
Libra Records 202-024

Joachim Kühn & Michael Wollny

Live at Schloss Elmau

ACT Music 9758-2

While for many the idea of dual piano duets may conjure up unfortunate visions of unchallenging background sounds from Ferrante and Teicher or alternately Billy Joel and Elton John camping it up, this communication among equals has a long history in so-called classical music and latterly in jazz. Neither of the duos here though could be confused with other well-known jazz twofers, such as those created by boogie-woogie stylists Pete Johnson and Albert Ammons, mainstreamers Hank Jones and Tommy Flanagan – or with each other. But each brings something characteristic and exceptional to the hoary concept.

Musical questing soloists, composers and bandleaders born within a year of one another, Satoko Fujii and Myra Melford initiated this session after meeting a couple of years ago and discovering common musical ground. If there are musical differences among the two, they are that the Japanese-born Fujii participates in a variety of configurations from duo to big band, while American Melford, who is now teaching at the University of California, Berkeley, has led mid-sized combos, but never a big band.

Born geographically closer, Germans Joachim Kühn and Michael Wollny are more widely separated chronologically with the former 64 and the latter 31. Kühn, who was one of the first musicians from then East Germany to make his mark on the international jazz scene, has played with everyone from fusion drummer Billy Cobham to alto saxophone visionary Ornette Coleman. Wollny, who wrote his diploma thesis on Kühn’s manner of improvisation, also gained the older pianist’ respect for his playing. This exceptional meeting, in fact, is one of the few situations that Kühn has shared with another pianist during his long career.

Centrepiece of their four duos and two solo pieces is “Hexentanz”, a Wollny composition written to showcase both men. Overall here, and during the other duos, interaction ranges from dynamic and lyrical to methodical and literal. Despite a variety of tempo changes throughout, the duo most impressively rises to the occasion when ponderousness is put aside for presto interface.

Strumming chords and cross handed pulsations enliven the sonic landscape. Yet as the two build a synchronous edifice of splayed note clusters, the internal architecture is too often on display. When staccato cadenzas are slowed down to andante, the gait turns processional, as one pianist occupies himself with low-frequency clicks and clanks – sometimes from the soundboard itself – while the other introduces soothing note clusters. Eventually the fantasia climaxes in a dynamic crescendo of note flurries.

Still something appears missing.

That fissure becomes more apparent during Kühn’s “Seawalk” and the duo’s subsequent encore. Consonant chords predominate, so that the feeling is more 19th Century than 21st. Baroque echoes are as often obvious as modal improvisations. Closely attuned enough so that any passing theme advanced by one player is immediately picked up on and amplified by the other pianist, this double-think has other drawbacks as well. Any wide sonic space left by one player is almost immediately plugged with kinetic cadenzas by another busy pair of hands as if any measure of silence is suspect.

Less closely attuned, Fujii and Melford benefit from preserving their own metaphorical breathing space during their three duos – the CD also includes a solo by each. On “The Migration of Fish” for instance, each takes a turn plucking sounds from within the piano, then alternate yanking strings – or what sounds like rolling a metal ball through the mechanism – with a legato keyboard fantasia that’s softer and more lyrical. Their polytonal exploration also involves passing chord formations from one to the other while simultaneously creating palindromes. Extending the dynamics by adding textures from temple bell and castanets, each is able to assert herself properly. You never doubt that two separate minds are at work.

This is unmistakable on the other Fujii-Melford duets as well, even though, like an old married couple finishing each other’s sentences, often one player begins a phrase and the other complete it. Still on the other hand, “Yadokari” is another illustration that simpatico doesn’t have to mean indistinguishable. Structurally, one pianist outputs a series of cumulative glissandi while the other produces abrasive string scrubs as if she was playing a guzheng. Able to move from staccato to languendo runs in an eyelid blink, theme variations from Fujii and Melford are appropriately syncopated as well as descriptive.

Those who admire other work of Wollny or especially Kühn, may rate Live at Schloss Elmau higher, and there’s no disputing that both men have commanding technique. But in the final analysis, that CD is fundamentally a record of exceptional piano playing. Under the Water on the other hand is a luminous session of outstanding piano improvising.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Under: 1. Yadokari 2. Trace a River 3. The Migration of Fish 4. Be Melting Snow 5. Utsubo

Personnel: Under: Satoko Fujii and Myra Melford (pianos)

Track Listing: Live: 1. The Colours of the Wind 2. Hexentanz 3. Elmau 4. Chaconne 5. Seawalk 6. Encore

Personnel: Live: Joachim Kühn and Michael Wollny (pianos)

July 29, 2009

Variations on a Theme

Guelph Jazz Festival Musicians On Their Own
Extended Play

Barry Guy/Mats Gustafsson/Raymond Strid

Tarfala

Maya MCD0801

Junk Box

Cloudy Then Sunny

Libra Records 203-019

John Zorn

News For Lulu

hatOLOGY 650

Matana Roberts

The Chicago Project

Central Control CC1006PR

Wadada Leo Smith’s Golden Quartet

Tabligh

Cuneiform Rune 270

AMMÜ Quartet

AMMÜ Quartet

PAO 50030

Healthy in its adolescence, the Guelph Jazz Festival (GJF) has become Ontario’s pre-eminent festival for improvised music. Now in its 15th year, the GJF presents improvisers in concerts, workshop and symposia. An appealing factor for listeners is that GJF concerts highlight only one of the versatile musicians’ many activities. Recent CDs capture other aspects.

Take British bassist Barry Guy, at Guelph with violinist Maya Homburger and bass clarinetist Jeff Reilly. Except for Guy’s string prestidigitation, that chamber-improv is nearly the opposite of the go-for-broke Energy Music on Barry Guy/Mats Gustafsson/Raymond Strid, Tarfala Maya MCD0801. Two high-octane Swedish players, saxophonist Gustafsson and percussionist Raymond Strid complete the band.

Spewing accentuated timbres, Gustafsson’s cries and snorts demand muscular retorts from the bassist. On the title track Guy uses guitar-like arpeggios to match the saxophonist’s echoing split tones, wrapping the friction of individual string pressure into a contrapuntal response. Strid’s rim shots and rattling snares provide the rhythmic glue. Eventually Guy’s harsh twanging plus abrasive sawing at strings near the scroll move the saxophonist’s smears, flattement and flutter-tonguing into contrapuntal counterpoint.

Chromatic bass thumps and conga-like pops from the percussionist push Gustaffson’s extended glossolalia from discursive to convergent on “Icefall”. Guy’s ostinato underpinning and Strid’s pats and pumps neutralize Gustafsson’s honks and tongue slaps into a diminuendo conclusion.

Resolving the clash between rough and gentle voicing, staccato and legato pitches also characterize Junk Box’s Cloudy Then Sunny Libra Records 203-019. Two members of the trio, Japanese pianist Satoko Fujii and trumpeter Natsuki Tamura play the GJF. A composer-arranger, Fujii explores new territory on this CD, using graphic notation to spur the improvisations. Junk Box’s third member is American drummer John Hollenbeck, capable of rhythmic interaction ranging from rattles and pumps from tam-tams and marimba to full military press rolls and bass drum thwacks.

On “One Equation”, Tamura uses split tones and triplets to create a call-and-response section all by himself, as Fujii plays the tremolo melody in tandem. “Opera by Rats” emphasizes piano pedal action as the theme shifts from Bop to Stride, while the trumpet brays and Hollenbeck snaps cymbals and pops snares. This popping serves as a coda to “Back and Forth”, which also describes the trio’s tonal connection. Tamura’s timbre is French horn-like as he echoes Fujii’s phrases, and the track concludes with cascading piano chords draping themselves over the others’ note clusters.

There a similar interchange among alto saxophonist John Zorn, trombonist George Lewis and guitarist Bill Frisell on News For Lulu hatOLOGY 650. This 1987 reissue is different, yet somewhat similar to the three sets of Radical Jewish Culture Zorn is presenting at GJF this year. Rather then re-interpreting and re-conceptualizing Jewish melodies, Lulu does the same for Hard-Bop classics. Yet as devotional or freylach-like ditties are transformed with percussion, electronics and electric guitars by Zorn at GJF, this CD performs a similar conversion as raucous blowing vehicles become recital-ready.

Both the guitarist and trombonist – who have performed at Guelph – are responsive enough to keep things moving, despite the lack of a rhythm section. Surprisingly, it’s often Lewis’ gutbucket braying which holds the pieces together from the bottom. “Venita’s Dance”, has the trombonist comping as the guitarist loops licks that turn to single-note filigree. Later Zorn steadily peeps and Lewis chromatically exposes the head. “Funk in Deep Freeze” isn’t funky, but instead finds Frisell distorting country-styled licks, Lewis roughening his tone and Zorn’s alto texture slinky and airy.

“Sonny’s Crib” plays up gospel inflections with the two horns passing on the theme like relay runners. Zorn double times, Lewis plays rubato variations and Frisell picks out blues tonality until the introduction is recapped by the altoist. “Melody for C” with conclusive organ-like reverb from Frisell, provides an opportunity for three-part harmony, with the trio’s improvisations divided into fuzzy multiphonics.

Matana Roberts also twists the jazz tradition, but less radically. The alto saxophonist, who brings her Coin Coin Continuum to the GJF, celebrates her own home town on The Chicago Project Central Control CC1006PR. Other Chicagoans contribute: drummer Frank Rosaly, bassist Josh Abrams, guitarist Jeff Parker – whose band Tortoise is at Guelph this year – and veteran tenor saxophonist Fred Anderson. In 2002 Anderson, played an incendiary GJF set with Kidd Jordan. Saxophonist Jordan (see Whole Note Vol. 13 #9) plays Guelph again this year.

In the same league as the Jordan-Anderson meeting, Roberts a capella duet with Anderson features swirling staccato lines intersecting contrapuntally – finally reaching rapprochement. On “Nomra”, she and Parker prove that free improvising can be low-key and supple, highlighting resonating guitar licks and tasteful saxophone arpeggios. Tunes are tougher elsewhere. “Exchange”, built on a walking bass line and the drummer’s repeated flams showcases Parker’s distorted flanges and bottleneck-sharp runs that contrast with Roberts’ fruity tone and slide-slipping vibrato. “Thrills” is a POMO blues with the saxophonist rooster-crowing and double-tonguing, Parker snapping delayed echo and Rosaly smacking the backbeat.

Pianist Vijay Iyer produced The Chicago Project and he’s at GJF 2008 with DJ Spooky. But it’s electric piano and synthesizer he brings to trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith’s Golden Quartet CD Tabligh Cuneiform Rune 270. Drummer Shannon Jackson and bassist John Lindberg are equally “Golden”.

Atmospherically referencing Fusion, but with simplistic beats leeched out, the disc’s color comes from Iyer’s Fender Rhodes pulsations. Strumming cadenzas backed with swaggering synthesizer drones, Iyer lets Jackson’s solid ruffs and Lindberg’s four-square rhythm anchor the compositions. On top of this ever-shifting bottom, Smith arches long-lined slurs and unhurried grace notes. Replicating a bugler’s tattoo, on “Rosa Parks”, or a bellicose call-to-arms on “DeJohnette”, the trumpet’s lines encompass high-pitched brassy trills and sputtering Bronx cheers. Extended essays in improvisations, Tabligh’s tunes bond fragmented brass slurs, cross-handed rim shots, kinetic piano cadences and string scratches into throbbing instant compositions.

Instant composition describes the music of Holland’s Instant Composers Pool (ICP), in residence at the GJF this year. But the creative ferment generated by the band is equally expressed when ICP band members work in smaller groupings. One is AMMÜ Quartet’s AMMÜ Quartet PAO 50030. Raucous drummer Han Bennink – with the band for 35 years – and unflappable violinist Mary Oliver – a 10-year ICP veteran – join forces with Munich-based cellist Johanna Varner and trombonist Christopher Varner. The Varners produce the sort of timbres Oliver and Bennink hear in the ICP from trombonist Wolter Wierbos and cellist Tristan Honsinger.

Never one to play presto when he can play staccatissimo, or pianissimo when fortissimo can be sounded, Bennink continually clinks, clanks, bangs, whacks and thwacks. So it’s instructive to hear his duets with the trombonist. Varner ejaculates speedy, emphasized brays, moving from vocalized syllables to tongue stops and alp-horn-like flutters. Amazingly this results in textures that fit hand-in-glove – or mute-in-bell –with the drummer’s bomb-dropping bangs and cymbal crashes. On their duet Oliver squeaks and spatters sul ponticello as the cellist responds with strums and shuffle bowing.

This comfortable creativity amplifies when the four play together. On “Improvisation II”, the trombone’s contrapuntal buzzes and the violin’s spiccato runs chase one another as the cellist double-stops and Bennink jabs and rebounds. As the strings distort into double counterpoint, the trombonist puts aside distended subterranean timbres for dog-whistle shrilling. Other times the drummer’s kettle-drum-like resonation faces legato coloration from the cello; alternately, wide, chromatic notes from the trombonist complement string-stropping from Oliver. Stop-time and polytonality characterize “Ammü”, although pitch clusters from the strings and horn can’t overcome Bennink’s frenetic time-keeping.

GJF audiences, exhilarated by what they hear live can be equally impressed by these CDs.

-- Ken Waxman

-- For Whole Note Vol. 14 #2

October 8, 2008

Carla Kihlstedt-Satoko Fujii

Minamo
Henceforth Records 105

Never underestimate the skill of improvisers in creating a sympathetic concordance, even if they arrive from seemingly incompatible foundations. Case in point is this CD, capturing two ad-hoc meetings between pianist Satoko Fujii and violinist Carla Kihlstedt.

Conservatory-trained, Kihlstedt is now most commonly found with avant-rock or avant-improv ensembles, while Fujii’s arranging and composing for small and large jazz ensembles hasn’t precluded interaction with Japanese folk and rock musicians. Perhaps mindful of the linked chamber music history of their instruments, the two bring advanced improvisational techniques to a combination that serves as a favorite vehicle for so-called classical composers.

Although there are passages that are almost calabetta-like and profoundly legato, the spectre of romanticism that usually informs such meetings has been banished along with pinafores and pearls. Even during rondo passages, both play simultaneously “in” and “out”. Fujii plucks and stops the internal string set, while Kihlstedt vibrates flying spiccato notes.

“Remainder of one, Reminder of two,” the most recently recorded track is also the most illuminative. Spacious and spectral, it demonstrates the interchangeability of roles, as the theme sluices from one instrument to another in broken counterpoint, but without showiness. Staccato and fragmented, this is an intense, near-caricature of a proper chamber piece. Revealingly though, when the fiddler extends her harmonies with foreshortened slices and choked partials, the pianist relies on pedal pressure and low-pitched glissandi to create soundboard dynamics. Still, despite their obvious mutual creativity, the fissure between jazz and non-jazz improvisation is still palpable.

-- Ken Waxman

In MusicWorks Issue #101

July 2, 2008

Satoko Fujii Min-Yoh Ensemble

Fujin Raijin
Victo cd 105

By Ken Waxman

Using the simplified scales and rhythm of Min-Yoh, or Japanese folk music, as her touchstone, pianist-composer Satoko Fujii has created a six-tune CD somewhat removed from the jazz big band and small combo sessions that characterize most of her burgeoning catalogue.

While simplified, folk structures don’t have to be simplistic. In fact, the sonic patterns from Fujii’s internal-strings-and-surface-keys inventions; the rasping, plunger tones and screeching brass lines from trumpeter Natsuki Tamura; and accordionist Andrea Parkins pumping the bellows of her instrument so that it alternately resembles an electric organ or a triggered sound source, are not unlike the strategies used in Fujii’s other compositions. Only trombonist Curtis Hasselbring’s pedal-point lowing or chromatic grace notes usually maintain the tunes’ basic melodiousness

Thus, to take one instance, traditional folk song, “Kariboshi Kirituta” and Fujii’s own composition “Slowly and Slowly” differ only marginally in execution. On the later the ornamental performance resembles a courtly dance rather than gagaku, with its climatic thick, metronomic piano chords and finely shaped, inconclusive brass tones. Similarly, the former tune mates a stretched, keening vocalized line with a harsh cascade of piano dynamics and long-lined, crying, cave-like echoes from mid-range trumpeting.

Putting her own modern and distinct handprint on traditionally oriented material is the pianist’s overriding achievement with Fujin Raijin.

In MusicWorks Issue #100

April 3, 2008

Double Duo

Crossword Puzzle
Libra Records 104-017

With trumpeters Angelo Verploegen of the Netherlands and Japan’s Natsuki Tamura serving as their corner men, two of jazz’s most idiosyncratic pianists – Holland’s Misha Mengelberg and Satoko Fujii, who divides her time between Tokyo and New York – face off in this live Amsterdam concert.

Completely improvised, the interpretations on the more than 33½-minute centerpiece and a less than 10-minute sequel allow the two keyboardists to move from foreground to background and vice versa; to complement each others’ phrases; to contrapuntally evoke other strategies; and to finish each others’ musical thoughts. It isn’t clear which pianist plays when, but it’s a good bet that to keep the performance off balance, trickster Mengelberg invokes burlesque piano exercises, harsh internal string-plucking and pedal pressure, while spinning out phrases that subtract or add to the proper number of beats.

Acclaimed as an arranger and bandleader, Fujii likely provides the organic undertow for the tunes, expertly splashing sharp and emphasized notes to create polyphony. Additionally, halfway though “a butterfly, bee, mantis and grasshopper”, both pianists combine for rumbling interplay that could be a four-handed expression of a James P. Johnson’s stride performance.

The trumpeters contribute as well. Tamura, Fujii’s long-time partner, and Verploegen, artistic director of the Concertgebouw’s jazz orchestra, who conceived of the meeting, are as chameleonic as the pianists. Open-horned and muted, the two hopscotch between sharp, fortissimo flourishes and guttural low-pitched cadences, evoking mouthpiece kisses, plunger note extractions and burnished horn textures. The CD’s high point is the conclusion of “a butterfly …” showcasing a jocular back-and-forth dialogue of corkscrewed growl, rasps, ratchets and sniffs from the brassmen as the dual pianos clink and clank behind them.

-- Ken Waxman

-- For CODA Issue 336

December 4, 2007

Satoko Fujii Quartet

Angelona
Libra 204-014

Developing a career as a lauded jazz pianist and big-band composer/arranger doesn’t appear to be enough for Japanese pianist Satoko Fujii. Flitting between Tokyo and New York, Fujii, and her partners and husband, trumpeter Natsuki Tamura, have made a point of involving themselves in projects ranging from traditional acoustic combos to electronica-tinged one-on-one duets – she has even recorded on the synthesizer and the accordion.

Angelona is her fourth outing with this quartet and there’s still something off-putting about it. Essentially the band is made up of Fujii and Tamura, who may be eclectic, but very much come from the jazz-improv world, and an odd couple of unreformed rockers. Drummer Tatsuya Yoshida is one-half of industrial noise band The Ruins and electric bassist Takeharu Hayakawa, plays R&B as well as improv.

Although evaluating the two rhythm players in a similar fashion to subtler improvisers such as drummer Aaron Alexander and bassist Mark Dresser who also play with the trumpeter and pianist is like comparing sushi and T-bone steaks, Hayakawa and especially Yoshida seem to require repetitive uniformity in their playing. On the six Fujii compositions performed here, they appear to have worked out a template which they apply to each track, merely varying the tempo. A practitioner of funk-styled thumb pops and Hendrixian flanged tone when given space, the bassist at least relates to jazz time. Wedded to bombastic ruffs and rebounds plus a heavy backbeat, Yoshida hardly seems to be on communicating terms with his cymbal, let along the complex counter rhythms jazzers prefer.

But this isn’t really a jazz record. Episodic, the defining track is the almost 13½-minute “Collage – in the Night”. With as many disparate variations as a formal sonata, this nocturne begins with Fujii chording impressionistically, though Yoshida cross-sticking accompaniment is more percussive than contemplative. Tamura’s pitch-sliding theme statement unrolls on top of an undulating ostinato from the pianist until his bright, emotion-choked lines explode into a flurry of triplets. Moving from skittering over the keys, Fujii dissipate the tension with a gentling pattern of descending modulations shadowed by pumping reverb from the bassist. A concluding leitmotif mixes almost heraldic trumpet with rock-solid drum beats.

Variations of the strategy abound with Tamura’s swaggering trumpet lines encompassing plunger work, muted rubato excursions plus a capella growls and sucks making a place for themselves and Fujii’s pitter-pattering and determined modal excursions among the popping bass lines and shuffle beats from the drummer. Out of place outside of an arena rock setting Yoshida’s extended drum solos drag. When they take place, the pianist often resorts to guitar-like arpeggios and scooping low notes from the piano’s bowls to restore equilibrium.

Layered polytonal key excursions characterize “Cicada”, the set’s other memorable composition. Another Tamura showpiece, his soloing begins with hushed frog rivets at the beginning, ends with wheezy whines and rebounds from lonely bugle-like calls to pitch resonation in the middle section. Around him Fujii octave jumps and voices speedy tremolo notes that turns to glissandi key sweeps and eventually agitato cross-handed overtones. Engaged in a sonic hide-and-seek diversion with the rhythm section, the pianist pushes the theme to its climax, avoiding overdone, corrosive drum beats and unvarying rock-style excursions from the bassist.

Proof of Fujii’s – and by extension Tamura’s – versatility, if not their sensitivity, Angelona meets its minor goals. But it’s no match for the pianist acoustic trio or big band work.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. An Alligator in Your Wallet 2. Collage – in the Night 3. A Poor Sailor 4. A Journey into the West 5. Cicada 6. A Brick House

Personnel: Natsuki Tamura (trumpet); Satoko Fujii (piano); Takeharu Hayakawa (electric bass); Tatsuya Yoshida (drums)

In MusicWorks Issue #96

November 21, 2006

TAMURA+SHARP+KATO+FUJII

In the Tank
Libra Records Libra 104-11

Analyzed like the arrangement of officials in the podium at a Beijing May Day parade, the way the personnel is displayed on IN THE TANK probably means that it’s more Natsuki Tamura’s session than one headed by Satoko Fujii. Usually in the past, his CDs have included broad, near-atonal intervals and harsh, electronic instruments, while hers, although sometimes featuring rock-styled musicians usually encompass classic jazz forms like the piano trio and the big band.

That doesn’t mean that pianist Fujii contributes any less to this aggressive free improv than Tamura, her trumpet-playing husband. Yet when you mix in the contributions of guitarist Takayuki Kato member of the Free Jazz Shibusashirazu Orchestra, who participated in a later Fujii quartet session where she first recorded on synthesizer, and New York guitarist and soprano saxophonist Elliott Sharp, whose eccentric outpourings have ranged from noise-rock to futuristic classical themes, her playing is the most distanced from electronics.

Really one 68-minute improv, the CD is divided into four tracks that should be listened to as a whole. Mixing the trumpeter’s bravura expressiveness and the techniques of the two guitarists who can replicate bass and percussion timbres, this is no laid-back jam session. It does have a particular shape however, with introductory passages and an elongated coda, both linked with the individualist playing of Tamura. Instructively, with all the dissonant, near-ghostly tones exhibited, IN THE TANK also implies traditional Japanese textures of koto-like plinks and finger-cymbal or rei pings at several junctures.

Still, as the exposition develops, distorted sine-wave pulsations and steady slide-guitar abrasions quickly subsume these delicate textures. Added to this is slashed flutter-tonguing and heaving echoes from Tamura’s horn, plus a low-pitched repetitive counter line from the pianist.

Developing this first-time meeting of equals, Sharp’s serpentine sax vibrations and the trumpeter’s tremolo wah wahs and bright, silvery pulse accelerate contrapuntally as percussion clusters – from Fujii or Kato? – rattle in the background, until a climax of layered guitar harmonics loudly crescendo in what sounds like multiple ring modulator tones. Soon a spray of curved licks and watery bird-like snaps are heard from the guitars implying an underwater fowl pool game has been captured in the studio. The pianist counters with measured single notes and Tamura spews heightened grace notes and flourishes, accelerating so that the sound melds with rolling, high frequency chords from Fujii. Thick fuzz-tone reverb are then heard from one guitarist and sharp resonating bottleneck licks from the other, with rasgueado strums ushering in the next variations.

Here, growling wave forms and dynamic contrasting runs from trumpet flow polyphonically only to stop short by the sound of breaking glass that bonds forced glottal timbres with steady rhythmic cadences from the piano – and chromatic thumps and movement from the guitars. Muddying the interface, Fujii explores the piano’s insides as Tamura spits out coarse braying textures. Another part of the improvisation’s development to the concluding section features one guitarist – probably Kato – pummeling his bass strings so rhythmically that this could be a solo by bass guitarist Jaco Pastorius.

Longer than the other tracks, the piece’s concluding variations are set up with bell-ringing guitar strums and Sharp’s vibrating soprano saxophone split tones that bring out boppy trumpeting from Tamura, an additional thumping bass part and polyphonic layering that causes Fujii to start pummeling high-frequency vibrations from the keys. Noh theatre-like growls and manipulated electronic hums reintroduce Orientalism as do pitches reminiscent of taku bells sounding. Taking an abrupt left turn, Fujii’s cadences finally turn almost impressionistically 19th century classical as the others fixate on atonality. The finale finds the brassman purring low-frequency adagio accents as the pianist comps behind him – as if these two are in one space, and the highly amplified guitars are in another. Coda is a double tongued-trumpet drone that dissolves into single whispering notes.

Created in Tokyo in 2001, this impressive, ever-shifting performance suggests a repeat should soon be in order.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Walking Squid 2. Flying Jellyfish 3. Sinking Shrimp 4. Crawling Crab

Personnel: Natsuki Tamura (trumpet); Elliot Sharp (soprano saxophone and guitar); Takayuki Kato (guitar); Satoko Fujii (piano)

January 16, 2006

Guelph Jazz Festival:

Improv On The Move
for CODA

Taking the concept of free-flowing improvisation a step further, one morning at this year’s Guelph Jazz Festival (GJF), 15 musicians performed simultaneously in four different whitewashed rooms of the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre.

The workshop developed this way, according to Ajay Heble, GJF artistic director, because so many musicians wanted to participate. Some – American alto saxophonist Marshall Allan, British pianist Veryan Weston, Québécois guitarist René Lussier and American banjoist Eugene Chadbourne – rooted on a spot and collaborated with whoever came along. Others moved from place to place and up and down the staircase as they played.

Trumpeter Gordon Allen from Montreal added fanfares to understated percussive taps from Guelph drummer Jesse Stewart in the main space and later combined with Lussier for showier work in an upstairs room. New York-based alto saxophonist Matana Roberts, wearing a dress festooned with razor blades and safety pins, and tenor saxophonist Jason Robinson from San Diego acted like traveling minstrels. At one point the two and altoist Allen blended for spicy multiphonic runs. At another, Roberts played a feathery obbligato behind a simple blues Chadbourne was chording.

Toronto bassist Rob Clutton constantly schlepped his ungainly instrument. In one space he sympathetically backed Chadbourne’s avant-folk, before that he combined in a staircase duet with Halifax clarinetist Paul Cram. Interesting juxtapositions occurred as faint sonic timbres bled into the textures produced by the visible performers.

At Sticks & Stones’ afternoon gig, Roberts, wearing face paint and a flowing gown, proved herself equally facile on clarinet and saxophone. With drummer Chad Taylor’s polyrhythms and bassist Josh Abrams’ powerful plucking as anchors, her solos encompassed wide vibratos as well as piercing note pecks.

Sharing the bill, Japanese pianist Satoko Fujii’s quartet worked from more of a composerly base. The keyboardist’s contrapuntal styling was seconded by the understated inventiveness of percussionist Jim Black and thick col legno swoops and windmill motions of bassist Mark Dresser, so the energy level built throughout. When Fujii reached inside the piano to liberate quivering pulsations, the drummer sawed on his cymbals for daxophone-like squeals.

In a set that echoed Fujii’s recorded work with Japanese noise rockers, trumpeter Natsuki Tamura spun out muted staccato lines, reminiscent of 1970s Miles Davis. That sound served as a sub-motif for the Festival. It was echoed in interludes from drummer/trumpeter Arve Henriksen, whose Norwegian band Supersilent, late at night brought synthesizer and computer-processed noises to an enclosed downtown mall with post-rock soundscapes that promised more than they delivered.

Quicksilver grace notes were showcased more impressively by trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith in the all-star Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) ensemble that opened the showcase concert in the soft-seated River Run Centre. Smith’s sprints and spits made common cause with the bassoon, flute, didjerido, shaker and miscellaneous “little instruments” of Douglas Ewart, Hamid Drake’s percussion and Jeff Parker’s guitar. A last-minute addition Parker’s twangy fills never really jelled with the others’ work. Episodic rather than cohesive, the best audience response came with Ewart’s anti-George Bush recitation.

Headliners, The Art Ensemble of Chicago (AEC) fared much better, hitting a groove with its opening number and keeping the time steady, no matter what detours into hokum, faux primitivism, blues, post-bop dissonance or pseudo-swing were evident. Based around the durable bass work of Jaribu Shahid and the solid beat of percussionist Famoudu Don Moye, this underpinning allowed the front line its freedom.

Playing trumpet and flugelhorn singly or together Corey Wilkes, combined fiery execution with sophisticated note placement. His musical personality was strong enough to hold his own with Roscoe Mitchell and Joseph Jarman, who between them play most members of the reed and flute families. Theatrical in his face paint and ceremonial robes, Jarman frequently honked two saxes simultaneously and interspaced his solos – one of which he played on his back like a 1950s R&B saxophonist – with shouts and a shuffling dance. Resplendent in a well-cut business suit, Mitchell belied his appearance with fierce polyphonic reed responses to Jarman’s japes and notable solos on both saxophones and piccolo. Mitchell’s parody blues, “Big Red Peaches” was the show’s finger-snapping climax, with Wilkes playing Cootie Williams-like plunger tones and the AEC confirming its commitment to all forms of improv from the simplest to the most complex.

The AEC concert was the capper to the GJF’s celebration of the AACM’s 40th anniversary as well as five days of impressive music. The concurrent improvised music colloquium provides an academic cachet lacking in other festivals. Internationalism was represented by Israeli pianist Yitzhak Yedid and the European musicians, while a group of Quebec’s Musique Actuelle heavy hitters such as saxophonist Jean Derome and bassist Pierre Cartier celebrated another concentrated scene in shows throughout the fest.

More pop-oriented performers were presented in the licensed tent in front of city hall, so the casual as well as the committed could sample the music. Furthermore, with workshops, free and open to the public, the uncommitted could discover a showcase like Montreal clarinetist Lori Freedman’s intense solo concert that used the room’s acoustics as well as extended techniques,

Solidly established at 12, with attendance growing, international jazz fans follow the GJF’s progress as it heads into its teen years.

--Ken Waxman

November 15, 2005

SATOKO FUJII TRIO

Illusion Suite
Libra 203-009

Sixth chapter of the ongoing saga of Japanese-American pianist/composer Satoko Fujii’s American trio, ILLUSION SUITE shows her confidence in working up from the single tune short story to the novella length (34 minutes) with the title track here.

Along the way it not only shows off the skills and techniques of the pianist and her sidemen – bassist Mark Dresser and drummer Jim Black – but suggests this may be the most comfortable setting in which she works. Fujii, whose playing situations range from massive big bands to electric combos featuring a Japanese rhythm section with a strong fusion – heck, rock, orientation – thrives in this acoustic setting.

Proof is the suite itself, which moves through many moods and energies. Dresser, who now teaches at California’s Mills College, is, hands down, one of the most versatile bassists extant. Work with people ranging from reedist Anthony Braxton to drummer Gerry Hemingway confirms this. Black is pliable as well, marking his mark as part of tenor saxophonist Ellery Eskelin’s trio as well as his own bands.

“Illusion Suite” itself advances from languid, impressionistic variations all the way through to sparse, near-atonal patterning and substantial rhythms, plus everything in between.

Beginning with ride cymbal scratches, fluttering arco poramento from the bassist and single note action from the pianist, the piece soon involves low-frequency cadences from Fujii, hollow rim slaps, bell tree and chain rattling from Black and most spectacularly sul ponticello interludes from Dresser.

Very shortly, when the bass begins walking and the drums play a shuffle beat, Fujii exposes different parts of the soundboard, adopting a fantasia of patterning, strumming chords and double timing for her take on modernistic soloing. Blurred, locked-hand arpeggios then encourage Black to express himself in a solo of perfectly formed ruffs and flams as the pianist and bassist together explore the darker, lower-pitched parts of their instruments.

Repeated, contrasting dynamics on her part cause Black to accelerate his hard snare and tom action, rambling into semi-march time. When Dresser squeals a sul tasto counter melody, Fujii returns to romanticism, except this time the beat seems to come from a beanbag shaken by Black. Following a rhythm rebound, Fujii expostulates a high frequency octave-spanning theme development, stabbing the keys in tremolo action as she references sources as disparate as Cossack dances and gospel hymns.

Reaching final variations on the theme, the suite opens up with a lyrical interface from the pianist and the double stopping bassist, while hard counter rhythms from the drummer echo. Summation posits a reorientation of the initial theme with sparse chording from Fujii, legato bowing from Dresser and irregular pulsing from Black.

Newer short stories to complement the novella, the CD’s subsequent three tracks – all, like the suite, written by the pianist – showcase other techniques. One composition appears to be an abstract contrafact of “Caravan” with Fujii contributing low-frequency turns, Dresser scratchy spiccato line and Black stroking what could be a glass armonioca. “An Insane Scheme”, on the other hand, probably isn’t as far out as its composer thought. But in it she skitters across the keys, replicating half-tango, half-Swing era licks. Black stabs his sticks into his drum tops and along his ride cymbals, as Dresser resonates sul tasto and sul ponticello color.

A true experimenter, Fujii shouldn’t be discouraged from trying out as many different styles with as many different groups as she wishes. But this CD confirms that much of her best work is done in the context of this trio.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Illusion Suite 2. An Irregular Course 3. Flying to the South 4. An Insane Scheme

Personnel: Satoko Fujii (piano); Mark Dresser (bass); Jim Black (drums)

May 16, 2005

ROVA: ORKESTROVA

An Alligator in Your Wallet
EWE

By Ken Waxman
December 27, 2004

Limited to Japanese distribution, An Alligator in Your Wallet is an important CD because it provides new evidence for what already should be regarded as truisms.

One is that the usually self-contained Bay area saxophone quartet ROVA can smoothly function as the sax section in any sized ensemble. The other is that pianist Satoko Fujii, who divides her time between Tokyo and New York, is a versatile enough composer to utilize the idiosyncrasies of these musicians in more experimental pieces than she usually writes for her own bans and combos.

A motley crew of the West Coast’s best improvisers, the 12-piece Orkestrova includes trumpeter Darren Johnston, veteran Michael Vlatkovich and Tom Yoder on trombones, violinist Carla Kihlstedt and Scott Amendola on drums and electronics. Added are Fujii, her husband and playing partner, trumpeter Natsuki Tamura, Angelo-turned-Brooklynite bassist Ken Filiano, and ROVA itself. That’s Bruce Ackley on soprano and tenor saxophones, Larry Ochs on sopranino and tenor saxophones, Jon Raskin on baritone saxophone and Steve Adams -- who wrote the two pieces here not from Fujii’s pen -- on alto saxophone and bass flute

Interestingly enough, for a musician who is a member of the best-known, so-called avant-garde sax quartet, it’s Adams’ pieces that inch closest to pure swing. His “Chuck”, for instance, is a bluesy romp that at times sounds as if it’s being played by Count Basie’s horn section. The more-than-16 minute composition is borne on call-and-response riffing from the reeds as well as Fujii’s outgoing arpeggio-rich soloing until it splinters into individual solos. Backed by walking bass and syncopated drumbeats, for instance, the composer frolics, slithers and squeals when it’s his time in front of the mic.

After that, Ackley produces reed blasts that match up with Yoder’s full plunger mode output, their duet mirrored later at a wavering, slower tempo by resonant licks from Raskin paired with breezy grace notes from Johnston. Polyphonic horn expansion then gives way to a perfectly executed ‘bone display by Vlatkovich that’s simultaneously clean and funky. As the piece reaches its climax, bravura hocketing and humorous broken octaves from all the horns meld, than fade away.

“Survival (in Five Acts)” -- Adams’ other contribution -- is a touch more extended than the former tune. It showcases his sonorous bass flute that presages a symphonic melding of timbres cushioning sweet, vocalized smears and wavering broken chords from the horns. Ominous sounding in parts, the line is extended with metallic electronic-like oscillations, with the constriction burst by Ochs’ twittering altissimo tone, high-pitched string-stretching from Filiano and irregular piano pulses. As Ochs continues to double and triple tongue, Kihlstedt’s jettes turn spiccato and pantonal lines sluice back and forth. Polyphonic sax timbres slow the tune down back to an echoing bass flute solo that reshapes the theme as the finale.

Fujii’s compositions are another matter. Experienced in creating for large groups --she leads both a Japanese and an American big band -- she manages the incredible feat of crafting dual-purpose pieces. Their performance seems to showcase screaming free-for-alls that you’d expect from other Energy Music classics such as Ascension or Machine Gun, while calling on the disciplined harmonies of a drilled modern swing ensemble like Gerry Mulligan’s legendary Concert Jazz Band. Certainly the first track, “A Lion in your Bag”, has all those attributes.

Characterized by a firm tempo, reminiscent of one of Anthony Braxton’s early marching band-style pieces, the title tune places jittery, flutter tonguing from Ackley on top of a malleable bouncing vamp from the other horns. As the trombones lob rubato grace notes at one another, Amendola’s percussion texture resembles big top circus music. Whinnying, whistling trumpet lines precede reed riffs and foretell a high-pitched, brassy ending.

Most atonal of the lot is the almost 10-minute “A Zebra on Your Roof”, where percussive rolls and flams plus massed reed section vamps follow almost otherworldly electronic oscillation. As the horn parts augment in volume, other timbres turn subservient to sul ponticello sweeps from the fiddler. In opposition Adams -- on alto -- produces smeary, circular, runs, while other hornmen assert themselves through determinedly vibrated lines. Pulsating piano chording that churns beneath all the other parts, mixed with faux-romantic violin tones, together suggest a chamber music concerto. That is until slammed percussion rhythms meld and mutate the shifting theme. Putting all classical references aside, the climax finds the brass heading towards Cat Anderson-like screeching tremolo territory.

Worth seeking out, the CD confirms the multi-faceted skills as players and orchestrators of both ROVA members and Fujii herself.

December 27, 2004

SATOKO FUJII QUARTET

Zephyros
Natsat MTCJ-3011

Hard, heavy and relentlessly rhythmic, ZEPHYROS is the third outing for pianist Satoko Fujii’s part Free Jazz/part Post Rock quartet. Combing the improv capabilities of Fujii and her husband trumpeter Natsuki Tamura with the more overt rock orientation of electric bassist Takeharu Hayakawa and Ruins drummer Tatsuya Yoshida, the seven pieces roar along with the speed and exhilaration of any ProgRock outing.

Trouble is, while the pianist uses her skills and compositional talents to create something more than the standard jazz fusion outing, she’s still only using one part of her talents. Like the protagonist in the 1950s film Three Faces of Eve, there are at least three Satoko Fujiis. One adds pounding piano lines to all the tunes she composed here. But the other two -- individually the sensitive stylist who records chamber improv with the likes of bassist Mark Dresser and violinist Mark Feldman and the accomplished composer/arranger who shapes big bands in Japan and New York -- are MIA.

Think of what could be accomplished if the proficiencies of Fujii’s other “faces” were added to the talents here. On this CD, it sometimes seems as if what Hayakawa, who is part of Dr. Umezu’s jazz-fusion band, and Yoshida bring to the bandstand nearly overpowers the contributions of Tamura and Fujii.

The frantic “15 Minutes to Get to the Station”, for instance, which luckily doesn’t take that amount of time to play, finds the pianist’s introductory, single note cadenzas buried beneath the drummer’s falsetto yelps, yells and near vocal retching. After the honking of a toy plastic horn, the bassist produces jet plane powered licks and the trumpeter introduces smeared chromatic runs. Soon the steady drone of Hayakawa’s bass gives way to Yoshida, who always seems intent on battering and banging every part of his kit. Even glancing grace notes from Tamura and Fujii’s accelerating, double time pressure doesn’t see, to faze or even mute his outlay. Finally more moderate piano chording and a sour-sounding brass run brings the percussionist back to earth, but not before Yoshida has screamed a few more time and created busywork with his trap set.

In the same way, “First Tango” has only a faint Latin tinge and appears far removed from the Argentinean dance rhythm. With a bass guitar lead that resembles Jaco Pastorius or Stanley Clarke at their most ornate, Yoshida adds press rolls that quickly evolve into reverberations that could come from electronic drum pads. After the trumpeter contributing a series of triplets and the pianist Cecil Taylor like-dynamic slurred fingering, a combination of bass and piano accompaniment and a rubato passage from Tamura eventually gives the tune its slight Hispanic cast.

Tamura gets to showcase his muted, electric period Miles Davis licks elsewhere and Fujii does the same with brief melodic parts. However, the most successful compositions are those that are furthest removed from dogmatic rock, jazz and jazz/rock traditions.

“Clear Sky -- For Christopher”, for one, is performed with a lilt reminiscent of a Kurt Weill cabaret song. It best utilizes Yoshida’s oddly metered drumming, shows off high frequency runs from Fujii and allows Tamura’s vibrating bent tones to seemingly accelerate the melody as much as express it. Before the initial theme is reprised at the end, the tune has evolved into a jaunty merry go round of trumpet mimicry and bouncing drumbeats.

“Flying to the South”, which is supposed to be linked to ProgRock, showcases a lyrical piano fantasia that gradually hardens as the trumpeter plays a simple repetitive pattern. Creating multi variations on Fujii’s theme the brassman overrides the funky vamp from Hayakawa’s four electrified strings and Yoshida’s high intensity banging.

An interesting funk-fusion variation, ZEPHYROS demands too many hard, McCoy Tyner-like modal vamps from Fujii without allowing her other talents full range. Long time followers may rate it higher. Too often, though, it appears as if she and the rest of the band are trying to act out the first song title, trying to create “The Future of the Past” instead of going straight to the future.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. The Future of the Past 2. As Usual 3. Flying to the South 4. First Tango 5. One Summer Day 6. Clear Sky -- For Christopher 7. 15 Minutes to Get to the Station

Personnel: Natsuki Tamura (trumpet); Satoko Fujii (piano); Takeharu Hayakawa (electric bass); Tatsuya Yoshida (drums and voice)

June 14, 2004

WILLIAM PARKER & THE LITTLE HUEY CREATIVE MUSIC ORCHESTRA

Spontaneous
Splasc (h) WS CDH 855

SATOKO FUJII ORCHESTRA-EAST
Before the Dawn
NATSAT MTCJ- 3010

Downtown, they say, is a state of mind. So is so-called downtown music, as these two live big band sessions demonstrate. With polychromatic ideas enlivening both groups, and with composers extending and distend the status quo, the points of congruence between SPONTANEOUS -- recorded in May 2002 at the epicentre of hip, Manhattan’s CBGB’s -- and BEFORE THE DAWN -- recorded 16 days later at a jazz festival in Hamamatsu, Japan -- are closer than you’d imagine.

Each CD features a clutch of top-rank soloists and section players, although the first CD’s two compositions are firmly in the instinctive tradition of post-New Thing large ensembles, while the BEFORE THE DAWN’s five tunes are more carefully arranged. That difference may reflect the orientation of the leaders, though, rather than where each is domiciled.

Bassist William Parker, the unofficial mayor of New York’s Lower East Side, has been in thick of the avant garde for 30 years, playing with groups of every size and with everyone from Cecil Taylor to David S. Ware. Formally educated with degrees from both Japanese universities and Boston’s New England Conservatory, pianist Satoko Fujii has evolved her own style drawing on mentors like Paul Bley, traditional Japanese sounds and echoes of post-Rock. She also lives part of the year in Tokyo and part in New York, where besides leading smaller bands, she helms her Orchestra-West, with sidemen often closely allied to the Parker circle.

DAWN allows her to show off her hometown team as Orchestra-East, which is both good and bad. Some 0f the players have a history in the Island’s somewhat insular experimental music scene, and add unexpected textures to her composition. Others toil at more conventional gigs, which on this disc sometimes leads to the creation of vamps from the sections that are more reminiscent of the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra than so-called outside large bands.

This musical schizophrenia is most notable on the almost 20 minute “Joh-Ha-Cue”. Initially moody and atmospheric, it begins by featuring Kunihiro Izumi, the alto saxist from Shibusa Shirazu (SS), a local avant-big band soloing in a reedy Klezmer-lite style. But in his showcase, Pikaia leader trumpeter Takao Watanabe moves between a whinnying muted lead line and a Maynard Ferguson-like screech. Almost before you know it, SS’s drummer Masahiro Uemura is bearing down on the sounds like a rock-influenced Buddy Rich and bassist Toshiki Nagata comes up with enough highly amplified thumb pops to fit in on a Brothers Johnson West Coast R&B session. Here and elsewhere, tenor saxophonist Hiroaki Katayama takes on the role Flip Phillips and much later Sal Nistico had in successive Woody Herman Herds: the reed sparkplug whose gruff growls and honks goose on the others.

Eventually swing gives way to gentle suggestion of gagaku music in the tune’s second section, with SS’s baritone man Ryuichi Yoshida, providing gentle, rural- sounding flute playing that could almost come from a shakuhachi. Cowbell thwacks and irregular patterns characterize the drummer’s contributions, until unison andante trombone lines give way to an open-horned, chromatic trumpet solo by Natsuki Tamura, Fujii’s husband and closest collaborator. Working with only the bass and drums behind him, his outbursts alternate with unison smears from brass and reed sections. As the other horns ascend and descend the chord structure, the drummer rolls and ruffs. Tamura then comes up with some unexpectedly gritty freylach tones, while the bassist’s unvarying rhythmic structure holds the tune together. Ending with all 15 musicians shouting out discordant timbres as loudly as they can, the coda showcases Jungle-style plunger work from the trumpeter.

Earlier, on “Pakonya”, baritonist Yoshida slurs, snarls, shouts and triple tongues out split tones, bouncing in and out of the altissimo range to confirm his avant-garde credentials. Added as well are darting Cecil Taylor-like arpeggios from the keyboard, one of the few times Fujii solos. Nevertheless, the underlying theme is strictly AfroCuban, complete with the band members noisily vocalizing, as well as a Randy Brecker-style high notes and brassy solo that isn’t ascribed to, but probably comes from trumpeter Yoshihito Fukumoto, who plays in Orquestra de la Luz, Tokyo’s (!) most acclaimed salsa band.

On other tracks there are effervescent and symphonic suggestions that meld conventional horn parts with contributions from Fukumoto, Free Improv veteran trombonist Tetsuya Higashi and tenor saxophonist Kenichi Matsumoto, whose slow, gliding aural walk contains a sprinkling of split tones. With wounded rhino squeals from the baritone sometimes vying with Arabic-sounding high reed interludes, and a restless drummer whose boppish bomb-dropping mixed with steady rock-like thump alternately pays homage to Kenny Clarke and Rush’s Neil Peart, other tracks seem to lack a cohesive vision.

Then again would the unison vocal spirit chanting that mixes with riffing horns on “Wakerasuke” have an additional resonance for an Oriental, rather than an Occidental audience? Older pianist Toshiko Akiyoshi wrote a similar section in a composition on her SHOGUN album years ago. With the sound reminiscent of a crowd at a sumo wrestling match or amateur talent time in Bedlam, it adds a confusing subtext to the piece. Otherwise it’s all daringly speedy bass runs, mewling trombone slurs, honking, dueling tenor sax lines plus octave jumps and piano clipping from the leader.

More catholic in conception than Fujii’s CD, SPONTANEOUS is a sound monument to the bigger band currents that have been around since ASCENSION. Setting the pace with judicious rhythm at the beginning, Parker is subsequently heard as infrequently on his session as Fujii is on hers. Here he sets up the pulse, helps create some light, Gil Evans-like rhythmic underpinning, and then gets out of the way for the other 16 musicians.

Along the way Gold Sparkle Band (GSB) member Charlie Waters sounds out some shrill, split-tone swaggering clarinet tones and trumpeter Matt Lavalle moves from shrill slurs, a more mellow middle register and chromatic runs, with the double drum team hitchhiking along behind him. Lavalle ends his solo double-tonguing with an allusion to the Woody Woodpecker theme. Squealing, multiphonic alto work from Rob Brown, trombonist Dick Griffin’s more expansive brass vibrations, lockstep rhythmic patterns and double bass drum pedal action and press rolls set up other standards. As another point of difference between this group and Fujii’s, tenor saxophonist Sabir Mateen may double time and swoop over the massed sections playing behind him, but you wouldn’t confuse that work with what Joe Farell used to do with the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis band. This is especially true when Mateen introduces snarling panting dog tones.

Throughout, there’s enough room for the soloists as there would be in more traditional big bands, yet riffing tutti passages, with the occasional high trumpet trill poking through the other sounds, provide the connective tissue to holds this together. By the end of the first track, the sections are moving as one, with themes sounded at different times varying the beat, all of which finally combine into a lumbering, shuddering end stop.

Dedicated to bassist Charles Mingus, there are times on the second track that the offbeat shuffle from the drummers -- who individually power the GBS or David S. Ware’s and Matthew Shipp projects -- plus the wiggling, blaring brass are more reminiscent of Sun Ra’s Arkestra or a studio funk band than anything Mingus wrote. Still Alex Lodico, playing Jimmy Knepper to Parker’s Mingus, corkscrews out emphasized plunger tones with a bit of grit at the end, while longtime Parker associate, trumpeter Lewis Barnes glisses from bent notes to repetitions. As the band forges on polyrhyhmically, with a tuba’s pedal point ostinato added, trumpeter Roy Campbell, Parker’s associate in Other Dimensions in Music, makes his way up the scale in half step grace notes backed by a steady walking pulse from the bassist. All around him the brass peck out their parts as the reeds surge and smudge the bar lines below them. As spontaneous hand clapping breaks out -- another Mingusian touch -- Matten overblows himself into dog whistle territory. Spurring the band forward as it undulates back-and-forth at the same time, his reed-shattering, incendiary tones serve the same incendiary purpose tenor saxophonist Booker Ervin’s did with Mingus. With the reeds and brass still detonating sounds every which way the piece fades away.

Whether your preference is for downtown Tokyo or downtown Manhattan, if you’re a modern big band follower, you’ll probably want both these discs.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Spontaneous: 1. Spontaneous Flowers 2. Spontaneous Mingus*

Personnel: Spontaneous: Lewis Barnes, Roy Campbell, Matt Lavalle (trumpets); Dick Griffin, Masahiko Kono, Alex Lodico, Steve Swell (trombones); Dave Hofstra (tuba)*; Rob Brown (alto saxophone, flute); Ori Kaplan (alto saxophone); Charlie Waters (alto saxophone, clarinet); Sabir Mateen (alto and tenor saxophones); Darryl Foster (tenor and soprano saxophones); Dave Swelson (baritone saxophone); William Parker (bass); Andrew Barker, Guillermo E. Brown (drums)

Track Listing: Dawn: 1. Pakonya 2. Joh-Ha-Cue 3. Wakerasuke 4. Before the Dawn 5. Yattoko Mittoko

Personnel: Dawn: Natsuki Tamura, Yoshihito Fukumoto, Takao Watanabe, Tsuneo Takeda (trumpets); Hiroshi Fukumura, Haguregumo Nagamatsu, Tetsuya Higashi (trombones); Sachi Hayasaka, Kunihiro Izumi (alto saxophones); Hiroaki Katayama, Kenichi Matsumoto (tenor saxophones); Ryuichi Yoshida (baritone saxophone, flute); Satoko Fujii (piano); Toshiki Nagata (bass); Masahiro Uemura (drums)

December 15, 2003

SOPHIA DOMANCICH

Pentacle
Sketch SKE 333032

SATOKO FUJII QUARTET
Minerva
Libra Records FK-204-007-CD

Brass front lines in a quartet and a quintet setting led from the piano bench are the points of congruence for these sessions. However the sounds of French pianist Sophia Domancich’s band range from contemporary to almost-outside jazz. On the other hand, Japanese pianist Satoko Fujii is attempting to link her modern, near-outside jazz with avant rock.

The compositions on Domancich’s CD comes together more often, using as they do some of the best inside/outside players in France. But at some points during its nine selections, the music becomes a bit too predictable. Braver in her aspirations, Fujii is unfortunately saddled with the drummer from a famous Nipponese rock band who bumps most of the time, rather than swings. Yet, although her session has many awkward moments, it’s often as listenable as the other, just to try to figure out what her quartet is attempting to do.

Someone who divides her time between Manhattan and Tokyo, Fujii has degrees from both Berklee and the New England Conservatory of Music. During the past decade, she has explored different facets of improvised music, often with her husband, trumpeter Natsuki Tamura. The two have performed as duo, he has been part of her big band and on her own she has also recorded in the classic piano trio formation. Recently rock rhythms have fascinated her, as MINERVA is the third recent CD she’s done with drummer Tatsuya Yoshida. Co-founder of The Ruins, Yoshida is by no means a jazzman; whether he’s an improviser is a question that’s also unresolved. The quartet here is filled out by Tamura and bassist Takeharu Hayakawa, who besides his improv work with John Zorn and as part of saxophonist Dr. Umezu’s band in Japan, also plays electric bass in funk and R&B groups.

VULCAN, the first CD by this group was notable for the sheer novelty of Fujii exposing her rock’n’roll heart. On this one, however, the freshness is starting to wear off since Yoshida appears to be unwilling -- or perhaps unable -- to modify his style the way the other modify theirs to deal with new impulses.

“Warp”, for instance, begins with the drummer vocalizing the sort of electronically processed ghost-like noises he often exhibits with The Ruins. After Tamura’s similarly processed trumpet tones succeeds this, Yoshida smashes out some speedy beats, leaving the groove to be created by Hayakawa’s foursquare bass work and Fujii’s piano explorations. As the theme is smeared out by the trumpeter in bent notes and high-pitched flourishes, the pianist produces a dissonant cascade of notes, gliding over the keys as a countermelody. Tamura may speed up his well-modulated brassy shakes and flutter tongued grace notes to a near blur by the end, but the only rhythm section member varying the underlying vamp is the bassist.

Better is “Weft”, where Fujii’s almost-Chopinesque solo and Tamura’s legato muted lines restrain the drummer for a time. Yet once the Latinesque riff appears on the keyboard, the thumping begins. Clipping the keys in a high-intensity rhythmic response Fujii continues at an accelerated pace, with enough space left for an angular bass solo filled with obligatory thumb pops.

Tamura can triple tongue with a Lee Morgan-like vigor and spit out pistol-cracking notes with the best of them, while Fujii’s high intensity, syncopated tremolos suggest a highly strung Bill Evan or Paul Bley. But the CD really only come together on pieces like “Caught in a web” when the couple gets a full buy-in from the other two.

With the buzz of the bass amp following inside piano research and preceding mid-tempo trumpet runs, Tamura’s distant brass cries on that composition turn first to pure buzz, then to pure shriek. Thumbtaps high on the bass neck set up a rolling ostinato from drums and what sounds like fists pounding on the piano keys. As the husband-wife team’s music turns more spacey, Hayakawa counters with electric bass thumps and Yoshida with rocking snare-drum rhythms. Upbeat, the tune ends with first one short and quick, then an even speedier reprise of the whinnying trumpet, bisected by bass line fuzztones.

Fujii may be trying to forge a new jazz-rock mixture, while Domancich seems to have created a musical scenario that blends Gallic-style Jazz Messengers output with brass band overtures.

Graduate of Paris’s Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique, the pianist has worked with saxophonists like Steve Lacy and Evan Parker, led her own trio with British bassist and drummer Paul Rogers and Tony Levin, and from 1997 to 2000 held down the piano chair in France’ Orchestre National du Jazz.

More or less organized as a cohesive spiritual suite, PENTACLE gives the impression that much of it was notated rather than improvised. Certainly the solos and ensemble passages fit together more ball-and-socket than anything on MINERVA. Domancich’s conception includes the use of Michael Marre’s euphonium in the chair filled by a trombone in most bands. A mellow, tenor tuba, the euphonium is usually found in Dixieland combinations except for the hard-bop work of Detroit’s Kiane Zawadi. Marre, who has been part of the New Jungle Orchestra and played with pianist Mal Waldon, should be so distinctive. Except for the odd passage, most finessed tones here seem to issue from the flugelhorn of Jean-Luc Cappozo, who has been a member of guitarist Raymond Boni’s octet and of Hexagone, a brass sextet.

Bass duties are handled by Claude Tchamitchian, who has also played with Boni, trombonist Yves Robert and American multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee. Drummer Simon Goubert has played in a trio with trombonist Glenn Ferris.

Throughout, the five musicians -- led by Domancich’s often mellow and two-handed piano playing, are put through their paces, trying on a variety of influences for size: near-blues, modal, child-like ditties, Cool school and hardish bop. “Belchose”, a ballad, finds Marre wielding his unusual axe with the facility of a Bob Brookmeyer, spurred on by Goubert’s sizzle cymbal and slow-moving brass choruses behind him. Fast, boppish stuff you would expect from Oscar Peterson or Martial Solal’s more conventional trios, “65er” gives full reign to the pianist’s ability to build up tunelets that turn around on one another, gradually moving up in pitch and speed as Cappozzo arrives to play in unison with her.

On the other hand, the title tune seems to adapt motifs from the 19th century classical tradition and Herbie Hancock’s “Maiden Voyage” in equal measure, then stretch them over skittering half-valve trumpet effects. With Cappozzo in the Eddie Henderson role, the tempo shifts to that of a Ahmad Jamal-like foot tapper led by the pianist, with the drummer emphasizing swinging sizzle cymbals and press rolls. As the tempo accelerates the brass section responds with sharp notes and fanfares.

Completed with a literal 34 second coda, the suite’s final seconds find the two horns moving in march formation countering Domancich’s light, Red Garland-style chording and a final recapitulation of the theme.

High-intensity tremolo work and pinpointed piano fills help Domancich keep the suite’s basic leitmotif going, though there are times that the build up of brass and rhythm become so overwhelming that it angles the music away from the night club and more towards the parade ground. That she’s able to get so many hues from her brass choir is a testament to Domancich’s compositional and arrangement talents. Alternately sombre and sprightly, the music on the CD would be perfect jazz festival fare -- maybe it already has been. That way the fervor of the live moment may mask many of the more standard passages.

Each pianist/composer has tried something a little different on her disc and each has been semi-successful. Yet both CDs provide many more -- and newer -- reasons to follow closely anything the two create.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Minerva: 1. Tatsu Take 2. Warp 3. Selvedge 4. Weft 5. Caught in a web

Personnel: Minerva: Natsuki Tamura (trumpet); Satoko Fujii (piano); Takeharu Hayakawa (bass, electric bass); Tatsuya Yoshida (drums, voice)

Track Listing: Pentacle: 1. Vestiges Pentacote Suite: 2. Don’t Even Think About It 3. Pentacôte 4. Polygone de Sustentation 5. Étoile Rouge 6. Belchose 7. 65ter 8. Raoul 9. Final

Personnel: Pentacle: Jean-Luc Cappozo (trumpet, flugelhorn); Michel Marre (euphonium); Sophia Domancich (piano); Claude Tchamitchian (bass); Simon Goubert (drums)

July 14, 2003

SATOKO FUJII

Vulcan
LIBRA Records 204-005

Could it be that beneath the demure exterior of jazz pianist Satoko Fujii beats the heart of a heavy metal babe? That could be so on the evidence of this disc.

Fujii, who maintains residences in both Tokyo and New York has become justly famous for her big band work and sensitive small group sessions with the likes of New York downtowners violinist Mark Feldman, bassist Mark Dresser, drummer Jim Black, plus her husband, trumpeter Natsuki Tamura. This CD, on the other hand, finds her and the trumpeter trading licks with electric bassist Takeharu Hayakawa and, more surprisingly, drummer Tatsuya Yoshida, one-half of industrial noise-rock band The Ruins, who also vocalizes lyrics in a language all his own.

Not only that, but Tamura, who has recorded minimalist duets with Black and others, is in full screech mode here. The end result is as if the pianist was in a band completed by supersonic note specialist trumpeter Maynard Ferguson, histrionic punk-jazz bassist Jaco Pastorius and Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham.

It’s Yoshida, whose work is most problematic here. Still operating as one part of a quartet does mute some of his most exhibitionistic tendencies, which he exhibited full force in live duo dates with Fujii. Cutting to the chase: the drummer while inventive and rhythmic and loud -- and boy is he loud -- has no sense of jazz dynamics or time. One doesn’t expect him to swing in the approved neo-con fashion, but he could do more to integrate his playing into a band concept. Many times his avant head-banging beat is so overwhelming that a mere sliver of piano sounds pokes through the mammoth percussion overload. His possessed-Linda-Blair-in-“The-Exorcist”-voice on track one adds gravitas, but not much difference to the music.

Although he has recorded with certified jazzbos like reedists Katayama Hiroaki and Dr. Kazutoki Umezu, Hayakawa is also part of the problem: he seems to be missing an “off” switch. When he and Yoshida are going full force there’s no space anywhere in the music. Those who recall the sound-and-silences interaction Fujii has had with Dresser and Black may wonder if she has been replaced by a doppelganger. Too much can’t be made of this, though, since the session is under her name and she wrote all but three of the nine tunes.

As a matter of fact, there are times when she bears down so forcefully on the keyboard with dynamic octaves and Tamura lets loose with cascading clear toned trumpet lines that they could be Myra Melford and Dave Douglas in one of that other pianist’s most commanding quintet tunes. Still, Yoshida’s speed-of-light percussion excursion solo which ranges from smashing the foot pedals on both bass drums, repeated beats on the snares, tom and floor tops and constant use of ride cymbals, crash cymbals and sock cymbals gives a new meaning to the term bombastic. Throughout he -- and to a lesser extent Hayakawa, with his exaggerated strums -- appear to be playing in contrast, rather than in concert with the others.

Hayakawa’s flat-sounding underamplified bass appears calmer on his duet with the trumpeter. Yet even here he seems to feel that he has to echo every smear, trill and cry that comes from the Tamura. Think of Miles Davis with Marcus Miller or Foley, not Paul Chambers or Ron Carter.

Fujii exhibits a steel hard touch, elongated tremolos and key clipping when she duets with Yoshida. Antsy and more obstreperous than you would imagine in a situation like this, the drummer genuinely seems to be trying to hold himself back, but ends up sounding like he’s trying to dig a hole in his snare with his drum sticks. Accompaniment is much more effective earlier on, when the pianist’s reflective arpeggios are matched by the occasional triangle peal, the shaking of a sound tree, the plink of cymbals, and -- probably courtesy of Tamura -- the clatter of toy tops spinning.

Fujii should be applauded for trying something new with this disc, even if the heavy metal bass playing and telephone book-like banging from the drummer upset some people. Tamura’s cat-like bent plunger work does get a work out, and the pianist -- when she can be heard -- offers inventive variations on techniques ranging from New Thing right handed skittles to impressionistic finger exercises. The essence of improvisation is experimentation, after all. But maybe next time, Ms. F. how about doing so with a different drummer?

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. The sun in a moonlight night 2. Incident 3. Ninepin 4. Footstep 5. LH Fast 6. Neko no Yume 7. Explore 8. Untitled 9. Junction

Personnel: Natsuki Tamura (trumpet, toys); Satoko Fujii (piano); Takeharu Hayakawa (bass); Tatsuya Yoshida (drums, voice)

September 30, 2002

SATOKO FUJII

April Shower
Ewe Records EWCC 0006

SATOKO FUJII
Junction
Ewe Records EWCD-0034

One of the dangers in analyzing the efforts of any non-North American improviser is expecting to find explicit references to his or her culture in the music.

Sure some creators introduce scraps of so-called native sounds into their creations -- Italians, South Africans and some Latin Americans are particularly good at that -- but that doesn’t mean that every foreign musicians wants to do the same thing. Which gets us to the work of pianist/composer Satoko Fujii.

Unlike someone like pianist Toshiko Akiyoshi, for instance, who despite having lived in the United States since 1956, uses Japanese sounds, instruments and references in writing for her big band, Fujii is a citizen of the larger improv world. In truth, her compositions and improvisations have no more to do with Japan than, say, saxophonist Ivo Perelman’s pieces reflect his native Brazil or violinist Phil Wachsmann’s playing references his Ugandan homeland.

Fujii performs in a wide variety of contexts, including her New York and Tokyo-based big bands, a quartet, and in the duo and trio represented here. Additionally, although she often flys back and forth from the archipelago to the United States the way some musicians commute through the Holland tunnel, her work is more easily linked to the POMO gestalt that include jazz and classical music than anything Oriental.

A classical piano student from the age of four until she was 20 and subsequently trained at both the Berklee School of Music and the New England Conservatory, the CDs highlight the split between her real musical history. The duet with violinist Mark Feldman could be heard as her classical-improv session, while JUNCTION, the fourth CD she’s recorded with rock-solid bassist Mark Dresser and resourceful drummer Jim Black, is her jazz disc.

Talk about background influences. Feldman, as a studio musician in Nashville and New York, recorded with folks as disparate as pop stylists Diana Ross and Carole King plus country icons Johnny Cash, George Jones and Tammy Wynette. Later, as an improviser, he was part of John Zorn’s Bar Kokhba string group, the Arcado String Trio, wrote for the Kronos Quartet and played and wrote for Cologne’s WDR Big Band, among many other gig.

Neither Klezmer, pop nor country music makes an appearance on APRIL SHOWER, which in instrumentation and intent instead comes across as a slightly skewed chamber musical recital. Not only that, but the violinist is only present on seven -- albeit the longest -- tracks. Four others are short piano solos and four feature Fujii overdubbing her work on two different pianos.

Spartan, rigid and ponderous, Fujii seems to be dragging her feet during the solo interludes, whether she’s using the piano pedals or not. Probably reminiscent of her classical recitals, she often seems to be giving all the notes the same temperament and the sound is a bit too clunky to really qualify as improv.

By the same token her overdubbing isn’t going to cause Lennie Tristano or Bill Evans to rise from their respective graves. One of the overdubbed Satoko’s always appears to be playing percussive prepared pitches, which is sometimes so tinny that it sounds like a music box. The “other”, on “Gnome”, for example, leans more towards TV cop show theme music than out-and-out swing. Harmonically she seems to have reached a little too far over those 176 keys.

The duo tracks are better, but still uncomfortably prim. On “Then I met you”, for example, despite the title, romance seems to have leeched from the tune. Instead it appears to be put together in blocks, with Fujii often playing in a weepy 19th century style, and Feldman staying true to the stiff recital feeling by highlighting his sustained bass pizzicato. Other tracks seem to depend on a back-and-forth formula of soft-soft, loud-loud, soft-soft.

Only on “Nice talking to you” do any sparks fly. Feldman arches a free-flowing melody at the top of his instrument’s range, while Fujii bashes away at the bottom end of the piano. Constant forward motion then characterizes her playing as she glides across the keys then rolls phrases out of the bass.

Things go much better on the trio disc. Firmly in the land of Jazz, or at least its modern variation, the pianist abandoned her formal prissiness and digs into the music, power chording in some places and elsewhere creating toy piano and prepared piano sounds. Confident enough after all this time with them, she also gives her sidemen enough leeway to do what they do best. Most of the time, Dresser is able to make his presence felt by powerfully suggesting shapes and rhythms without often moving to the foreground. On the other hand, Black, who is usually as resourceful as he is active, constantly finds different parts of his kit to emphasize, depending on the shape and slope of the composition.

“Ninepin”, for example, which begins with what sounds like a kids’ water fight between Black manipulating a pianica -- a plastic mini keyboard -- and Fujii’s husband, trumpeter Natsuki Tamara -- in his one appearance -- tooting a melodica -- soon resolves itself as a cool, West Coast-style swinger. Sticking mostly to the piano’s mid-range, Fujii

advances some expansive theme variations in a romantic manner that suggests Bill Evans in cinemascope. Throughout, the bassist makes sure to keep everyone on the straight and narrow.

In contrast, “Eel” is as slinky as its title suggests. Early on, Black unleashes a mini drum solo, sabotaging the rhythm with grating cymbals and snare blows to turn what appeared to begin a cocktail ballad with bass accompaniment into something unraveling at a breakneck tempo. The tune accelerates as the pianist picks up the beat and showcases similar theme patterns at many different volumes and pitches. Continuing to roll around his kit like a child in a playpen, the drummer pushes Fujii up the stairsteps of invention to some of her quirkiest soloing on record.

Pure strength characterizes “The future of the past”, the enigmatically titled final tune. Ostensibly a simple jazzy theme, it too is whipped into frenzy with Black punishing his kit, Dresser furiously bowing, and an impassioned Fujii producing menacing, rumbling chords.

With the drummer alternately hammering like a blacksmith or somehow producing a lighter-than-air cymbal screech and the bassist making arco forays into what sounds like violin-range, the pianist confines herself to the odd plink and plunk, then two-handed bass explorations. Suddenly in the penultimate minutes, pizzicato bass reintroduces the major theme, which is revealed to be a POMO hand clapper. It lopes along at this tempo as Black projects a lesson in maintaining a beat without pulverizing it, until the piece subsides into some serene key strokes and the rumble of the bass.

More examples of Fujii’s versatility, neither of these discs can be faulted. But for the more exciting experience, three musicians add up to a lot more than two.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: April: 1. April shower 2. Mirage 3. Inference 4. After you have gone 5. Then I met you 6. In the morning 7. In parenthesis 8. I know you don't know 9. The snow was falling slowly 10. Gnome 11. Nice talking to you 12. Behind the notes 13. A strange piece of news 14. Right before you found it 15.White sky

Personnel: April: Satoko Fujii (piano, overdubbed piano); Mark Feldman (violin)

Track Listing: Junction: 1. Junction 2. Go on foot 3. He is very suspicious 4. Ninepin* 5. Humoresqueak 6. Eel 7. Caret 8. The future of the past

Personnel: Junction: Satoko Fujii (piano); Mark Dresser (bass); Jim Black (drums, pianica*); Natsuki Tamura (melodica*)

January 8, 2002

SATOKO FUJII

JO
Buzz zz76008

Like many young pianists faced with the looming reflections of giants such as Evans, Tyner, Taylor, Bley and Jarett, Satoko Fujii must confront musical schizophrenia. Should she perform in a fragile, introspective style or let herself be completely free? Unfortunately, it would seem that small group and solo work brings out her quiet side, which isn't all that distinctive.

That's why this album plays to her strengths. Working as part of a 15-piece ensemble, the pianist, who divides her time between New York and Japan, is able to become just one part of the mix, leaving the stronger statements to more extroverted players. More tellingly, she wrote six of the eight compositions. And the pulsating big band writing, built on ascending motifs, belies the delicacy of some of her solo work.

One person who won't be accused of delicacy is her husband, trumpeter Natsuki Tamura, who likely takes most of the trumpet solos. It's probably him who provides the aggressive push on tunes such as "Reminiscence" and "Kyu", as well as the slower section and pseudo bugle calls on "Sola".

A strong rhythmic pulse is maintained by drummer Aaron Alexander and Stomu Takeishi, who seems to be playing electric bass most of the time. Together with baritone saxophonist Mike Sim, they give the frequently atmospheric music a good bottom on which to build the solos.

Surprisingly --or perhaps, more tellingly -- there's nothing particularly "Oriental" about Fujii's writing or that of Tamura, who was responsible for the other two tunes. Sure, there may be a vague Japanese inflection in the middle section of Tamura's "Okesa-Yansado", that feature heavy emphasis from Alexander and a slippery solo from one of the saxophonists; while "Wakerasuka" balances some single note Cecil Taylor-like keyboard frills with bass riffs, a fleet low-down trombone solo and vocal exhortations from the band that may be in Japanese -- but that doesn't make it Asian. Instead the music sounds like modern, big band writing along the lines of Gil Evans or Carla Bley.

And the session seems to be invigorating as well. Some of Fujii's best work may come on "Around The Corner", where subdued inner-piano explorations are backed with shimmering, ascending horn cushions.

The chief weaknesses of this session could perhaps be chalked up to reticence. Many of the tunes, like the child-like "Jasper" never seem to develop and are cut off before they make a statement. And, of course, not identifying the soloists is frustrating, when you don't know, for instance, which reedist is upfront on "Around the Corner".

All and all, though, JO is a solidifying of Fujii's skills, which hopefully will be applied to her next disc in a more intimate context.

Jack Walrath, John Carlson, Dave Ballou, Natsuki Tamura (trumpets); Curtis Hasselbring, Joe Fiedler, Joey Sellers (trombone); Oscar Noriega (alto saxophone, bass clarinet), Briggan Krauss (alto saxophone), Chris Speed (tenor saxophone, clarinet); David Castiglione (tenor and soprano saxophones); Mike Sim (baritone saxophone); Fujii (piano); Stomu Takeishi (bass); Aaron Alexander (drums)

-Ken Waxman

January 5, 2000