Satoko Fujii

November 8, 2023

Torrent
Libra Records 201-72

Dave Burrell
Harlem Rhapsody
Della Musica Records No #

Jacques Demierre
The Hills Shout
Wide Ear WER 069

Matt Choboter
Postcards of Nostalgia
ILK 334 CD

Felicia Nielsen
Mors Dag
Noshörning Records NOS 007

Margaux Oswald
Dysphotic Zone
Clean Feed CF 603 CD

From the earliest days of Jazz – more precisely pre-Jazz since Ragtime was keyboard centred – solo piano sessions have helped define musicians’ paradigms from Jelly Roll Morton to Cecil Taylor. Precisely because the instrument was designed as a stand-alone orchestra, inventive players can emphasis its melodic or rhythmic function or both, constructing individual identities for themselves from the same keyboard.

Elder statesman of this collection is American Dave Burell, now 82, who in his recordings since the mid-1960s has demonstrated that he allegiance both to innovative sounds and the tradition. Harlem Rhapsody is another confirmation of this, since his allegiance to the song form has always allowed him to include Ragtime and Blues recreations in his work. No less a timeworn ditty than “My Melancholy Baby” share space with the Burell originals on this disc. To be honest that performance isn’t particularly transformative, although fitful rickety-tick chording and allusions to player-piano and knotty upright piano clanks links it to original compositions wedded to honky-tonk and player-piano-like inferences with more astute note substitutions. These are more clearly illuminated are tracks such as “Red Summer March” and “Paradox of Freedom “. On the former, a mid-point between swing and Stride is referenced as Burell slides among elegant and bent notes, emphasizing subtlety and strength, and separating the program into sections as suspended time, seesaw rhythms and shifting moods give different colors to each note. More thematic, the latter tune studs slippery forward motion with frequent head recaps along with relaxed pumps before settling on a final section of basement-pitched tone elaboration. At points key brushing delicacy threatens to sweeps the tracks towards excessive formalism, but note shading and sliding confirm that avoiding such common keyboard traps has remained in Burell’s approach over the years.

Therse snares are also avoided during the single improvisation that make up Jacques Demierre’s The Hills Shout. Yet at 69, and best-known for his collaboration with Urs Leimgruber and Barre Phillips, the Swiss pianist’s sidesteps piano predictability in a strategy far removed from Burrell’s. That’s because he spends more times stroking strumming and stretching the instrument’s inner strings plus exposing vibrations from the piano’s soundboard and wooden architecture than on the keyboard itself. The carefully wound strings respond to his plectrum like strokes with timbres that expressed not only the singular tone but also each one’s extension. By midpoint bell-like reverberations from the keys meet string twangs until pedal point rumbles from the instrument’s lowest quadrant reach a crescendo of bent tripartite textures. Once that’s established, the narrative is resolved with alternations between staccato stopped-key variations and bouncy string glissandi, ending with a waterfall of emphasized tones. Contradictions are finally resolved as gentler key tinkles are heard beside the string slides to project a more rounded narrative and link to the introduction.

Variations of these approaches are used by Japanese pianist Satoko Fujii, 64, although her program is more (Free) Jazz oriented than Demierre’s. Performances like “Cut The Painter” and the title track emphasize cross pulses, piledriver patterning and thematic movement. At the same time motifs such as shaking and strumming squeaking wound metal strings and key percussion are prominent, with her most common reference Cecil Taylor-like contrasting dynamics. She also builds up her elliptical and original expositions with single-note emphasis, higher-pitched variations and story telling allusions from mid-range tones. This means she makes detours into simple balladic overtones – and out of them – as swiftly as her sudden bursts of string straining emphasis or andante swing are emphasized. Completing the circle with a mid-tempo narrative on the concluding “Wave Crust”, she slowly moves up the scale and produces a spectacular finale of splattering chord changes.

More closely aligned with Demierre’s ideas are the echoes and textures created from microtonal prepared piano and electronics during the 10 selections on Canadian-in-Copenhagen Matt Choboter’s Postcards of Nostalgia CD. Setting up his parameters with soundboard echoes and an equivalent Carnatic-style drone, the first of the younger stylists who are noted from now on, creates an interface sometimes so dense that it suggests the textures of a second piano superimposed on the tones of the first. Although near silences, soundboard rumbles and electronic suggesting oscillations are also part of the mix, the focus of the session’s premier climax come from the affiliated “Font-de-Gaumes”, “Eleusinian Mysteryy” and “Castalian Spring”. Here Choboter, who has worked with the likes of François Houle, works the piano’s wound strings, keyboard, backboard and hammers into resonating harmonies which affiliate clipped notes and stopped key resonation into near gamelan emphasis. Moving among bent note microtones and tile-clinking surfaces, the timbres suggest in turn a celeste, a bell tree and a mah-jong set. Expressing further techniques where romantic overtones vibrate alongside prepared buzzes, bare piano lines are supplemented by the second sequence with simultaneous keyboard and string pressure that move the narrative linearly. By the concluding “Omphalos” ghostly inner piano rumbles, wave form-like drones and singular key clips are resolved into a distinctive juddering arrangement.

These alternating romantic and rugged processes are also prominent on Swedish pianist Felicia Nielsen’s Mors Dag. Yet here the keyboardist, who has played with Anna Högberg and others, uses motifs ranging from stop-start variations and pastoral resolutions to display her concepts, but seem to lack resolutions. Not that there aren’t interesting asides during the evolution. On “Key to Happiness” for instance, after working up from romantic allusions, the tempo moves from adagio to allegro so that the remaining exposition not only exposes sudden stops and reverb, but brings in noises from other objects which contrast favorably with the preceding carefully shaped notes. Following more formalized asides than are more Satie than Strayhorn, the session’s extended title track explores many of the already expressed motifs. Both mystifying and motivating, strained drones bring in musique concrète allusions, which if explored earlier may have resolved some of the formalist – freedom detours of the preceding tracks.

In opposite fashion to this, the percussive block chords expressed during the concert that make up French-Filipina pianist Margaux Oswald’s Dysphotic Zone relate back to the power expressed by Burell during his recital. Yet the progressive vibrations and silences and atmospheric asides also lighten what could have been an overpowering presentation by Oswald, who has recorded with Jesper Zeuthen. Cognizant of Free Jazz advances from the likes of Taylor, Burrell and others, the pianist’s crab walk across the keyboard encompasses energetic exploding patterns, swift pressurized chording and emphasis on the piano’s highest reaches, splaying patterns in multiple directions. At the same time a sense of balance is maintained with frequent pedal pressure, atmospheric coloring, unexpected but paced glissandi and passages that isolate individual notes at an andante pace before speeding up the designed tough key punches that define the program.

More differences than similarities exist among these pianists – and the conceptions of many others – but that’s what makes their discs so vital in the expression of solo keyboard sounds.

–Ken Waxman
Track Listing: Harlem: 1. Red Summer March 2. How Little We Know 3. Paradox of Freedom 4. My Melancholy Baby 5. Harlem Rhapsody 6. Dancing With Monika

Personnel: Harlem: Dave Burrell (piano)

Track Listing: Hills: 1. The Hills Shout

Personnel: Hills: Jacques Demierre (piano)

Track Listing: Torrent: 1. Torrent 2. Voyage 3. Light On The Sea Surface 4. Cut The Painter 5. Horizon 6. Wave Crust

Personnel: Torrent: Satoko Fujii (piano)

Track Listing: Postcards: 1. The Dreamer That Remains 2. Font-de-Gaumes 3. Eleusinian Mysteryy 4. Castalian Spring 5. Temptations Toward Sorcery 6. Pneuma 7. Descent to Deep Valley Water 8. The Circular Ruins 9. Weaving Ropes of Sand 10. Omphalos

Personnel: Postcards: Matt Choboter (microtonal prepared piano and electronics)

Track Listing: Mors: 1. Gnetter no.1 2. Folkvimmel 3. Gravid i Tjernobyl 4. Key to Happiness 5. Klädnypa 6. Dissonans Konsonans Nonchalans 7. Brunkebergstunneln tio över tre 8. Gnetter no.2 0 9. Havspedalen 10. Mors Dag 11. Gnetter no.3

Personnel: Mors: Felicia Nielsen (piano and objects)

Track Listing: Dysphotic: 1. -237m 2. -951m

Personnel: Dysphotic: Margaux Oswald (piano)