The alternating Fujii/Tamura pieces are complex frameworks from which she is able to invoke dynamic sound ranges. Fujii opens the gates to permit a considerable amount of collective improvisation while still maintaining control of the reins by injecting stellar ensemble statements on top. ― Frank Rubolino, Cadence Continue reading
Typical Japanese sentiments sprinkled here and there are as impressive as, or sometimes more impressive than, the exoticism of artists of the underground scenes of Chicago and Niels Petter Molvaer. ― Takehiro Oshizuka, Musee
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If you turn up the volume and attune your antennae to the tonal and textural subtleties of Natsuki Tamura’s trumpet and Satoko Fujii’s piano, you’ll hear a rare breed of mood-derived propulsion. — Sam Prestianni, Jazziz Continue reading
For me form precedes function. If I can’t see the big picture, that universe of sound within which a given piece will come to life, it is hard to organize the internal details. The great thing about the Sax & Drumming Core experience is that I have four special forms developed for this band. So I actually get to write pieces similar to other ones I’ve already penned, just like a jazz band-leader who works with “the changes.”! It’s cool, and it really helps to get to the center of the music and probe and evolve. — Larry Ochs, quotation from the liner notes Continue reading
4 ½-stars…. Satoko Fujii. She and her band are the perfect synthesis of modern music, going beyond jazz, integrating anything from classical over folk and traditional music, with jazz, free improvisation and avant-garde, but then pushing it all over the edge. This enables her to explore composition/improvisation with a musical richness which is given to few…. The last piece’s title, “Vapor Trail” is a good descriptive of the music, which comes as a kind of soothing finale, when catharsis has been reached, a moment of acceptance, of resignation, of awe for the beauty that arises after the violence, the fire has died down, after the sun has set. Brilliant!” ― Stef Gijssels, Free Jazz Continue reading
The Satoko Fujii Quartet makes full use of their characteristic musical density and speediness. Satoko Fujii’s powerful left hand, Takeharu Hayakawa’s fat, distorted and rolling electric bass sound, busy but extremely solid drumming of Tatsuya Yoshida and Tamura Natsuki’s trumpet conveying linear power and lyricism altogether pump out impending groove which is maximized by the slick and radical mixing technique incorporating compression and reverberation.” ― Koji Murai, Swing Journal Continue reading
This band’s name, like it’s music, has many layers. Ma-do means “window” in Japanese. But “ma” also means “the silence between notes.” Fujii chose the name to show how the music opens to the outside (just like window) and that silence can have more meaning than notes. In an acoustic setting, the group’s absorbing improvisations explore subtle textures and tone colors, using silence and group interaction to build brilliant collages of sound, melody, and rhythm. They have released two CDs, Heat Wave (2008) and Desert Ship (2010) Continue reading
Recorded in Poland in November 2005 it is perhaps most notable for Tamura’s dominance. While the trumpeter is often in the shadows of his pianist wife, here five of the eight pieces are his, three of those — including the title track — also recorded by his excellent group Gato Libre. Fujii and Tamura play beautifully together and the Krakow studio session is a lovely, somber affair. They open with the title track from Gato Libre’s first album, 2005’s Strange Village. It’s rare for the pair to revisit compositions — they seem to have too much forward momentum for that — but here it’s great to hear new arrangements of familiar tunes. With the Gato Libre project, Tamura has from his quirky, sometimes noisy work of just a few years ago and has been writing unabashedly beautiful, Spanish-inflected melodies for his new group. Here, without guitar or rhythm section, Fujii’s romantic playing sets them at a different angle. Without space between the tracks, the album comes off as a suite and 22 minutes in, when Fujii’s first piece begins, it’s immediately apparent how different they still are. If Tamura has dropped some of the humor and abstraction of his earlier work, Fujii is still the jazzier of the two. With Ninepin’s the tempo picks up, the melodies come out of hiding and Tamura meets her with bright, boppy playing. — Kurt Gottschalk, All About Jazz Continue reading