The Satoko Fujii Orchestra New York, led by one of this
era’s greatest big band composers, sounds as fresh and exciting on their
eleventh recording, Entity, as they did on their first in 1997. Working with a
13-piece big band that includes a remarkable nine founding members, Fujii
continues to inspire her orchestra—and be inspired by them. This is an album
that revels in the soloing prowess of its individual members while showcasing
the ever-inventive composing and arranging of its founder and leader. The album
will be released on February 14, 2020 via Libra Records.
“Since I have been playing with this band for such a long
time now, I know how they play,” Fujii says. “And when I compose, I actually
hear their sound. So, soloists actually support my writing. For me composing
for this band is more like collaboration—when I compose I am already working
with the band, even if I am in Tokyo and they are in New York. Is this strange
to say?”
Strange or not, the music is unfailingly exciting, with an
urgency and brio born of the mutual admiration between performers and composer.
“The music cannot be boring with these musicians,” Fujii says. “This band
inspires new ideas in me and I always feel free to try something different
because I know they will respond and make it sound great.”
Fujii also found inspiration for her compositions from
another source. “I am not a scholar and don’t have a deep knowledge of
Buddhism,” Fujii says, “but I was reading about some of Buddha’s ideas online
and learned that he had the idea of elementary particles centuries before
physicists discovered them. The concept inspired me to write the pieces on this
album.”
Throughout the album you can hear the chemistry between
composer and orchestra. Fujii finds all kinds of ways to frame soloists and
provide full ensemble themes that set a mood, often several different moods
within the same composition. “Entity” opens with an attention-grabbing blast of
energy that launches guitarist Nels Cline and drummer Ches Smith into a
bounding and weaving duet. As the band sets up a regular two beat pattern,
guitarist and drummer dip and curl in off-kilter tandem around the pulse,
beautifully highlighting their subtle sense of rhythm and texture. Tidal surges
of massed horns on “Flashback” launch trombonist Joe Fiedler into a boldly
phrased solo that gives way to a searching, introspective unaccompanied solo
from Oscar Noriega. Trumpeter Herb Robertson’s virtuoso mute technique
highlights his outing with the band’s blue-chip rhythm section.
Fujii’s majestic “Gounkaiku” is a feature for trumpeter Dave
Ballou’s elegant melodicism, while “Elemental Particle” lets Ellery Eskelin cut
loose with a fire-breathing solo. “Everlasting,” a heart-wrenching ballad,
pairs soloists in duets, first trumpeter Natsuki Tamura and trombonist Curtis
Hassellbring, then alto saxophonist Briggan Krauss and baritone saxophonist
Andy Laster.
On occasion throughout the album, Fujii creates spontaneous
arrangements to fit the moment. “While we are playing,” Fujii explains, “I can
hold up Sign 1, which means play a long tone with any note, or Sign 2, which
means play a glissando. There are others, too. It may be a little bit like
Butch Morris, but my signs are for predetermined materials.” This can be heard
in the opening moments of “Gounkaiku,” when the band plays a series of long
tones that glimmer like a necklace of jeweled sounds or toward the end of
“Flashback” when Fujii uses the long tones to create tension before the band
plays the rollicking closing theme. It’s a part of the ongoing dialog between
the composer and a seasoned orchestra fully attuned to her creativity.
Critics and fans alike hail pianist and composer Satoko
Fujii as one of the most original voices in jazz today. She’s “a virtuoso piano
improviser, an original composer and a bandleader who gets the best
collaborators to deliver," says John Fordham in The Guardian. In concert
and on more than 80 albums as a leader or co-leader, she synthesizes jazz,
contemporary classical, avant-rock, and folk musics into an innovative style instantly
recognizable as hers alone. A prolific band leader and recording artist, she
celebrated her 60th birthday in 2018 by releasing one album a month from bands
old and new, from solo to large ensemble. Franz A. Matzner in All About Jazz
likened the twelve albums to “an ecosystem of independently thriving organisms
linked by the shared soil of Fujii's artistic heritage and shaped by the forces
of her creativity.”
Over the years, Fujii has led some of the most consistently
creative ensembles in modern improvised music, including her trio with bassist
Mark Dresser and drummer Jim Black and an electrifying avant-rock quartet
featuring drummer Tatsuya Yoshida of The Ruins. Her ongoing duet project with
husband Natsuki Tamura released their sixth recording, Kisaragi, in 2017. “The
duo's commitment to producing new sounds based on fresh ideas is second only to
their musicianship,” says Karl Ackermann in All About Jazz. Aspiration, a CD by
an ad hoc quartet featuring Wadada Leo Smith, Tamura, and Ikue Mori, was
released in 2017 to wide acclaim. “Four musicians who regularly aspire for
greater heights with each venture reach the summit together on Aspiration,”
writes S. Victor Aaron in Something Else. As the leader of no less than five
orchestras in the U.S., Germany, and Japan (two of which, Berlin and Tokyo,
released new CDs in 2018), Fujii has also established herself as one of the
world’s leading composers for large jazz ensembles, leading Cadence magazine to
call her, “the Ellington of free jazz.”
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