W – X – Y – Z

All artists filed by last name under W, X, Y and Z :

Satoko Fujii Orchestra Tokyo | Live!! | Libra Records

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Live!! is pure candy, a treat in every aspect. This album offers a riveting 70-minute set, both as an audio CD and a video DVD… Highlights abound… Each of the seven tracks features two lead players or soloists, so that at the end of the album all 14 members of the orchestra had their moment in the spotlight. Fans of Fujii’s highly personal, lyrical yet high-energy composition style will be in seventh heaven. Highly recommended and a 2006 must-have. ― François Couture, All Music Guide Continue reading →

Satoko Fujii Quartet | Vulcan | Libra Records

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Pianist Satoko Fujii’s latest CD starts out with a droning chant from drummer Tatsuya Yoshida that sounds like some bizarre ancient ritual honoring the god Vulcan, after whom the CD is titled. After four minutes, though, the quartet kicks into a Spanish-like vamp that starts hammering the anvil of free jazz with wild abandon. Well, the label “free jazz” fits this quartet only in part, a better term might be “intense jazz.” Most structures are abandoned. Most listeners will find there are few obvious, clear melodies at the start. Indeed, on several cuts, it feels as if the recording started mid-jam. But that’s good, very good, since all the unbound energy allows wondrously experimental forms to emerge out of the chaos. The quartet spares us all the predictable fluffing around that usually distracts from getting right to the molten core of creative impulse. — Michael Pronko Continue reading →

Satoko Fujii Quartet | Angelona | Libra Records

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This album is f***ing wild. Part free jazz a la Zorn, part experimental rock, Satoko’s improvisatory collection is wonderfully chaotic, percussive and dissonant. That is, when she isn’t laying down dark and delicate harmonies, like in the opening to “collage – in the night,” a composition that streams off her kinetic piano melodies and builds with flowing, Maria Schneider-esque grandeur. Whether she’s furiously smacking the piano around or gently caressing harmonies out of it, Satoko uses the full tonal and dynamic range of the instrument, and it’s an exhilarating thing to hear. Named for the ancient goddess of secrecy, Angelona indeed feels mythical, as well as raw, transcendent, and wonderful. ― Michael Gallant, Keyboard Magazine Continue reading →

First Meeting | Cut The Rope | Libra Records

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In many improvised music sessions or bands, playing a diatonic scale can get you some evil looks. First Meeting, however, is completely free in that respect. The range of volume and expression is also as broad as we can make it. If you want to see for yourself, come to one of our gigs. And bring 15 or 20 friends, please. — Natsuki Tamura (Translation by Alan Gleason) Continue reading →

Satoko Fujii Orchestra | Zakopane | Libra Records

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There are several outstanding qualities that emerge in pianist Satoko Fujii’s big band writing. She has an extraordinary sense of color that plays upon the moist exquisiteness of muted shades, as well as recognizing and utilizing the vivid ends of her palette of colors. She also combines ingenious use of the timbre of various elements of a big band – brass, reeds nad woodwinds, strings that replicate the rhythmic nature of the piano and those in the lowest register, and brilliant use of percussion coloring. She combines all of this like a visual artist working on a gigantic canvas, infusing it with unique color and ensuring that it remains wet so that it appears to change shape and hue every time it presents its arresting sight to the inner eye… The result is a dish so wild and flaming that it burns with the fever of artistic fission. ― Raul d’Gama Rose, All About Jazz Continue reading →

Max Johnson | Mark Whitecage | Steve Swell | Tyshawn Sorey | Quartet | Not Two Records

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With the onset of fan donation pages all over the Internet artists, musicians and inventors of all sorts can now speak directly with their fans and solicit funds for all types of projects. Some are fantastical like ‘help me turn into a cat’ fund or ‘help make my paper clip rocket ship a reality’, but more often than not it is a musician with a book of songs that means the world to them and are looking for a way to make their vision a reality. There are even added perks to sites like these. They come in the form of incentives for the public’s donations, such as a copy of the completed album or even executive producer credits. The Max Johnson Quartet is a success story born from this new artist driven way to produce music. From a business model to recording and art work, (fantastic by the way if you can get a close look at it) to getting Not Two Records to back the recording. — Philip Coombs Continue reading →

John Dikeman | Klaus Kugel | Raoul van der Weide | Across the Sky | Not Two Records

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This band, like the best in the tradition, has linked time-past with time-present, invoking both shared musical history and individual agency as a totality (not a spectrum) that is as irreducible as timbre: timbre-upon-timbre combining into a meta-timbre that is evocative of the band itself, individual components giving way to the band as a corporate individual. (A corporation actually deserving of personhood.)The band—as the missile—moves screaming through the space it inhabits while triggering memory, history and time…however— unlike the missile—it does not end in a fiery crash or dull misfire, but continues on. — Jeff Kaiser, 13 December 2011 Continue reading →

Erika Dagnino | Narcéte | Slam Productions

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The quartet we are about to hear presents us with the most unusual of outfits — unusual not so much in its aim to link poetry with jazz music (or vice-versa, if you wish), hardly anything new, as for the peculiar path it takes in reaching such goal: namely, a gradual and thoughtful testing process of the project through different «live» situations. Give credit for it to the friendship and mutual regard among the artists. Haslam and Waterman go back a long time, same as Pastor and Dagnino; plus, this was not the first time Haslam and Pastor, Dagnino and Haslam have worked together. Credit is also due to a shared interest in «music and poetry», following a tradition of long standing in both Italy and Great Britain. — Gennaro Fucile Continue reading →