Uminari is a Japanese word that refers to a sound
rising from the sea, a low-frequency roar that portends a coming storm or
tsunami. The poetic word serves as an ideal title for the third CD, available
in the US and Canada on May 5, 2015 on Circum-Libra, from the unconventional
international quartet Kaze. The two-horn quartet is equally adept at the calm
and the storm, with expressive subtleties giving way to overwhelming torrents
of sound.
Japanese pianist Satoko Fujii and trumpeter Natsuki
Tamura reunite with French trumpeter Christian Pruvost and drummer Peter Orins
for the band's most evocative and inventive outing to date. The music for
Uminari was developed over the course of a 12-day tour of Japan during which
skeletal compositions by each of the quartet's members were elaborated and
experimented on by the group as a whole.
"Every day we decided to play with different ideas,"
Fujii recalls. "Today we'll play the piece one way, the next day a
completely different way. We wrote very simple music beforehand and developed
it together."
Uminari opens at gale force with "Tioky
Atsimo," the first piece to date contributed to the ensemble by Pruvost.
The heady whorl of sound ultimately subsides to a stutter-stop rhythm by Fujii
and Orins, accompanied by breathy rasps and brassy bleats by the trumpeters,
who ultimately fall in line with the insistent beat. A second eruption ensues,
as the piece becomes an exercise in forming order out of chaos.
Orins' "Vents Contraires" follows from the
opposite extreme, starting from a place of shimmering stillness with the
drummer's scraped cymbals and a low murmur from the horns. The piece builds
gradually in intensity over half of its 14 minutes before dissolving into
pointillistic shards. "Running Around," the first of two Fujii
compositions on the album, begins with a circuitous melody articulated by the
trumpeters, ceding to a fragmented groove from the rhythm section. At the
midpoint it becomes a play of dynamics and silences among the four musicians.
Tamura's "Inspiration" - at 20 minutes, the
album's longest piece - showcases the trumpeter's trademark humor with a
textured array of percussion, extended techniques, prepared piano and toy
instruments. The set closes with Fujii's dark, impressionistic title track
combining heartfelt, dirge-like melodicism with tempestuous improvisation.
Fujii and Tamura originally met Orins in 2002 when the
pianist's quartet shared a bill with the drummer's collective Impression in his
hometown of Lille, France. Nearly a decade later they crossed paths again and
Orins suggested a collaboration with Pruvost, inaugurating Kaze's unusual
instrumentation.
"We immediately became friends," Fujii says.
"We felt like we shared the same kind of musical values. And we had so
much fun doing this group we just kept playing together."
Uminari is one of three new releases scheduled for
2015 from the always- prolific Fujii, whose prodigious output is only rivaled
by her remarkable drive to constantly explore new terrain. Also on tap are
albums by two new ensembles: Tobira, which expands the pianist's New Trio to a
quartet with the addition of Tamura; and the Satoko Fujii Orchestra Berlin, the
fifth city-specific large ensemble she's founded, and the first group launched
in her newly adopted home.
Kaze is a departure from much of Fujii's output, being
a collective rather than a group led by and dedicated to performing the music
of the powerful composer. "I don't have much opportunity to be a side
musician," she says. "Almost all the time I'm the leader; I write and
direct the music and arrange the gigs. Finally, this gives me a chance to play
with great musicians who all write music and all sound different. I have so
much fun playing their pieces."
One of the most original and wide-ranging voices in
modern jazz, Satoko Fujii has documented her abilities on more than 70 CDs in
less than 20 years. The Tokyo native relocated to the U.S. to study at Berklee
College of Music and New England Conservatory, where she was mentored by the
likes of Paul Bley, Herb Pomeroy, George Russell and Cecil McBee. Through her
touring and collaborations she's truly become a citizen of the world, most
recently settling in Berlin. She's founded jazz orchestras there as well as in
New York and Tokyo, Nagoya, and Kobe in Japan. Fujii has also led the quartets
Ma-Do and Tobira and an avant-rock group featuring Ruins drummer Tatsuya
Yoshida. In recent years she's formed fruitful collaborations with such
inventive artists as pianist Myra Melford, drummer John Hollenbeck, violinist
Carla Kihlstedt, and guitarist Elliott Sharp.
Trumpeter Natsuki Tamura is internationally recognized
for his ability to blend a unique vocabulary of extended techniques with
touching jazz lyricism. Since 2005, Tamura has focused on the intersection of
European folk music and sound abstraction with Gato Libre, a quartet featuring
Fujii on accordion, Tsumura Kazuhiko on guitar, and the late Koreyasu Norikatsu
on bass. In 2006 he co-founded the collaborative trio Junk Box with Fujii and
drummer John Hollenbeck, while his most recent quartet, First Meeting, features
Fujii, drummer Tatsuhisa Yamamoto and electric guitarist Kelly Churko. Born in
Otsu, Shiga, Japan, Tamura studied at Berklee College of Music and the New
England Conservatory and has taught at the Yamaha Popular Music School and at
private trumpet studios in Tokyo and Saitama.
A generous, insatiable and prolific musician,
trumpeter Christian Pruvost has forged meaningful collaborations in jazz,
improvised music and live performing arts settings. With Didier Aschour,
Pruvost is a co-director of Round the World of Sound, which gathers 14
musicians from the Muzzix collective and Dedalus ensemble to perform the
madrigals of eccentric poet/composer Moondog. In a new project called PCM Blat,
he explores repertoire from medieval to contemporary and improvised music with
Maxime Morel (tuba) and Samuel Carpentier (trombone). He is also a member of
Circum Grand Orchestra and La Pieuvre, the improvisational orchestra conducted
by Olivier Benoit.
From a classical music background, Peter Orins
branched out to study the drums at the Conservatoire National de Région of
Lille, where he studied with Guy Gilbert, Jean-François Canape, and Gérard
Marais. At the same time, he studied improvisation with Fred Van Hove and
composition with Jean-Marc Chouvel and Ricardo Mandolini. Beginning in the mid-'90s, Orins played in
the bands that would come to form the Circum collective: Impression, Quartet
Base, and the Stefan Orins Trio. He coordinated the Circum collective until its
fusion with fellow collective CRIME in 2010, and created the 10-piece Circum
Grand Orchestra. He also plays in La Pieuvre, a French-Vietnamese project
called Hué/Circum, and the Wei3 trio with German pianist Jarry Singla and
Polish bass player Maciej Garbowski. Since the creation of Muzzix in 2010,
Orins has coordinated the artistic direction of that collective.
