Azure Wolf

Satoko Fujii Who Finds Music Hidden?

• Richard Rodriguez
• 22.09.2022
• 0
• 45

Pianist Satoko Fujii, who discovers melody tucked away in the intricacies of everyday existence Satoko Fujii, a Japanese pianist, performing in Kobe, Japan, on March 3, 2021. The prolific musician is able to employ sound, whether in large or small ensembles, to make the intricacies of the world a bit more understandable.

Who is Satoko Fujii?

The Rebirth of the Old Guard The prolific musician is able to employ sound, whether in large or small ensembles, to make the intricacies of the world a bit more understandable. Credit. This image was created by Kosuke Okahara for The New York Times. March 17, 2021 The pianist and composer Satoko Fujii will pull your attention to the particulars of the music she is playing, whether she is performing solo piano or leading one of her many huge ensembles.

1. Fujii is often considered to be the most productive pianist in jazz, despite the fact that he is also among the most underappreciated musicians in the genre.
2. He is the leader of a bewildering variety of bands, both large and tiny.
3. She has published close to one hundred albums during the 1990s, the most of which have been on her own Libra Records label.

In order to mark the occasion of her 60th birthday, which is a significant event in Japanese culture and is referred to as “kanreki,” she released a new album every month beginning two years ago. The albums featured both solo piano and big-band pieces.

1. Fujii claims that she can hear music in seemingly random places, and she views it as a challenge to transmit the feelings she experiences in the environment as directly as she possibly can.
2. She mentioned this in a recent interview that she gave from her home in Kobe, Japan.
3. This probably sounds crazy, but when I write I feel that the music is already there — we simply didn’t realize,” she said.

“I have the impression that all I’m doing is hunting for something that was concealed, but which is already present.” A conversation that is overheard, the sound of an airplane flying overhead, or simply the rustle of trees can all serve as sources of inspiration.

• During the pandemic lockdown, she was unable to participate in performances, jam sessions, or record in a studio, thus she found herself growing increasingly unanchored.
• During her strolls across Kobe, she was struck by the strange uneasiness of the atmosphere, but she and her husband, the trumpeter Natsuki Tamura, did not have anybody else with whom to perform.

She said that everything had been canceled. “I felt like: Who am I?” She made the decision to install a home studio in her itty-bitty piano room, which was just just large enough to accommodate her cherished Steinway grand piano. After that, she proceeded to write, record, and release songs at an even quicker pace than she had been doing so previously.

Contradictions are brought into harmony across all of Fujii’s body of work; despite the fact that her music is abstract and at times chaotic, each component shimmers with clarity. Her capacity to express immense breadth and textural diversity is comparable to her delicate attention to detail, which she pays in circumstances both great and little.

When I listen to her, I find myself wanting to compare her words to works of visual art: The level of complexity and attention to detail in these works is comparable to that of a Mark Bradford painting, and the scale of the pieces is comparable as well.

1. She has uploaded well over a dozen albums to her Bandcamp website since the beginning of the confinement.
2. The albums include “Prickly Pear Cactus,” a trio disc that she and Tamura made with the electronic musician Ikue Mori, trading sound files via email and building gradually on one another’s work; “Beyond,” a set of serene duets with the vibraphonist Taiko Saito; and a solo-piano album called “Hazuki,” which will be available on CD this Friday and features compositions that Fujii wrote during the early months of quarantine.

In an email, Mori explained that she had begun working with Fujii a few years ago, after hearing from other artists active in the scene that the pianist had a “dynamic and eclectic approach.” Mori and Fujii had collaborated on a number of projects together.

They were able to work together at a leisurely pace since they were working on the “Prickly Pear Cactus” project. Mori stated that the fact that they were able to take their time playing and focus on the nuances was the ideal circumstance for the two of them. Fujii was born in Tokyo, and she has been enamored with music ever since she was a little girl, albeit she did not instantly succeed at it.

She has a clear recollection of the difficulty of learning classical piano, as well as the fact that some teachers were less encouraging than others. She said that when she was a young adult, one of her classical educators advised her: “If you keep practicing piano, you will be an excellent musician by the time you are my age, which is somewhere around 70.

Everyone has the potential to be a talented pianist. Just keep going with the game.” Even though it may not seem like much, Fujii’s determination was strengthened by hearing that. During the interview that took place by video the previous month, she was bubbly and ready to laugh. But she said that she is a restless soul and that the only time she feels at ease is when she is producing something.

She stated that, “If individuals are pleased enough with their lives, they probably can just sit down and enjoy a decent cup of tea and be happy.” “I’m not like that. I have to learn to live with my energy in some way, and I have no idea how to communicate this to you.

With my work, That’s the thing it makes me happy; doing that gives me the feeling that I’m actually living my life.” Fujii was awarded a scholarship to study music at the Berklee College of Music in Boston after graduating from high school, and he moved to the area in 1985. When she was still a young pianist, she was still working out how to place herself in relation to the jazz heritage.

She hadn’t yet composed much of her own music at the time that she attended a composition master class taught by Chick Corea. Corea was the instructor for the class. She explained that what he meant was that just like we practice playing an instrument, we can also practice writing compositions.

1. At the time, that was really fresh information for me.
2. After some thought, I came to the conclusion, “OK, so maybe I can simply do that.”” It’s possible that the most important factor was just consistently putting in hard effort, even when it came to making music.
3. Credit for the Image.
4. Bryan Murray Or does it not even constitute work? Fujii finds auditory inspiration in a wide variety of places; therefore, the true struggle would be to resist the urge to continuously twist it into something else.

Fujii’s music blurs the lines between abstraction and realism, serving as a type of journal in which she chronicles the sources of her creativity. The process of plucking or scraping the strings of the piano, covering them up as she strikes the keys, and allowing the low, rustling sounds of a horn section to blend into harmony are all examples of abstract expressionist techniques that may be used to music.

• However, it is balanced by her profound sense of simplicity, which originates from the conviction that she is only transcribing the splendors of the world that surrounds her into musical form.
• Fujii went back to Japan after graduating from Berklee College of Music and found employment as a teacher and session musician while simultaneously establishing a name for himself in Tokyo as an innovative bandleader.

The next year, 1993, she relocated back to Boston in order to continue her education at the New England Conservatory at the graduate level. There, she received instruction from the prominent pianist Paul Bley, who is known for his aimless and dreamy approach to playing music.

1. According to Fujii, he recognized something inside her playing that she hadn’t really unleashed yet, and he urged her to remove as much jazz orthodoxy as she possibly could.
2. He did this because he saw something she hadn’t fully unleashed.
3. She reported that he had told her that “You cannot play like some other individual.” “There is a reason to acquire your CD if you play like yourself,” you say on the album.

After her graduation, the two remained in contact with one another and, in 1995, they collaborated on the recording of “Something About Water,” a magnificent piano duet that was also one of Fujii’s first self-released albums on Libra. Soon after, she began receiving invitations to play in various avant-garde venues in Brooklyn, where she and Tamura would finally settle down to live for the next year and a half.

1. She eventually moved back to Japan, but not before setting the groundwork for what would become Orchestra New York, a large band that featured many of the most talented improvisers the city had to offer at the time.
2. She has contributed to the creation of several albums with the band, which will be commemorating its 25th anniversary the following year.

She has also been responsible for the upkeep of Orchestra Tokyo, which is made up of musicians from that city, as well as Orchestra Berlin, which she established while she was living in Germany for five years in the 2010s. Fujii’s work is interpreted in a variety of ways by each orchestra, therefore it’s possible that she adapts her composition style accordingly for each ensemble.

Tony Malaby, who plays the tenor saxophone, has been a member of Orchestra New York since the 1990s. According to what he claimed, Fujii’s instructions to the band might sometimes appear to be frustratingly understated, and she recordings very seldom more than one take of each song. According to Malaby, there are instances when he does not fully get the complexity of the music until he hears the recording played again after it has been completed.

He said that one’s ability to imagine the simplicity was lacking. “You’ve completed everything, and you’re on the train, and all you can think is, ‘What the heck was that?'” Malaby proceeded, elaborating on his previous statement by detailing the process of exiting a recording session with the orchestra.

1. The CD is sent to you in the mail, and as you listen to it, you realize how strong it is.
2. He was blown away by the skill with which Fujii translated the language of her solo piano playing into the language of her big ensembles, in which she seldom plays a note on the keyboard.
3. According to what he had to say, “She has transcended the piano with the orchestra,” and it sounds the same when she plays trio or solo.

Fujii has stated that the process of producing a solo album, as opposed to one with a huge band, does not influence her thought process in any way. In either case, the goal is to use music in a way that makes the intricacies of life a little bit easier to understand.

How many albums has Satoko Fujii released?

The Rebirth of the Old Guard The prolific musician is able to employ sound, whether in large or small ensembles, to make the intricacies of the world a bit more understandable. Credit. This image was created by Kosuke Okahara for The New York Times. March 17, 2021 The pianist and composer Satoko Fujii will pull your attention to the particulars of the music she is playing, whether she is performing solo piano or leading one of her many huge ensembles.

• Fujii is often considered to be the most productive pianist in jazz, despite the fact that he is also among the most underappreciated musicians in the genre.
• He is the leader of a bewildering variety of bands, both large and tiny.
• She has published close to one hundred albums during the 1990s, the most of which have been on her own Libra Records label.

In order to mark the occasion of her 60th birthday, which is a significant event in Japanese culture and is referred to as “kanreki,” she released a new album every month beginning two years ago. The albums featured both solo piano and big-band pieces.

1. Fujii claims that she can hear music in seemingly random places, and she views it as a challenge to transmit the feelings she experiences in the environment as directly as she possibly can.
2. She mentioned this in a recent interview that she gave from her home in Kobe, Japan.
3. This probably sounds crazy, but when I write I feel that the music is already there — we simply didn’t realize,” she said.

“I have the impression that all I’m doing is hunting for something that was concealed, but which is already present.” A conversation that is overheard, the sound of an airplane flying overhead, or simply the rustle of trees can all serve as sources of inspiration.

1. During the pandemic lockdown, she was unable to participate in performances, jam sessions, or record in a studio, thus she found herself growing increasingly unanchored.
2. During her strolls across Kobe, she was struck by the strange uneasiness of the atmosphere, but she and her husband, the trumpeter Natsuki Tamura, did not have anybody else with whom to perform.

She said that everything had been canceled. “I felt like: Who am I?” She made the decision to install a home studio in her itty-bitty piano room, which was just just large enough to accommodate her cherished Steinway grand piano. After that, she proceeded to write, record, and release songs at an even quicker pace than she had been doing so previously.

1. Contradictions are brought into harmony across all of Fujii’s body of work; despite the fact that her music is abstract and at times chaotic, each component shimmers with clarity.
2. Her capacity to express immense breadth and textural diversity is comparable to her delicate attention to detail, which she pays in circumstances both great and little.

When I listen to her, I find myself wanting to compare her words to works of visual art: The level of complexity and attention to detail in these works is comparable to that of a Mark Bradford painting, and the scale of the pieces is comparable as well.

• She has uploaded well over a dozen albums to her Bandcamp website since the beginning of the confinement.
• The albums include “Prickly Pear Cactus,” a trio disc that she and Tamura made with the electronic musician Ikue Mori, trading sound files via email and building gradually on one another’s work; “Beyond,” a set of serene duets with the vibraphonist Taiko Saito; and a solo-piano album called “Hazuki,” which will be available on CD this Friday and features compositions that Fujii wrote during the early months of quarantine.

In an email, Mori explained that she had begun working with Fujii a few years ago, after hearing from other artists active in the scene that the pianist had a “dynamic and eclectic approach.” Mori and Fujii had collaborated on a number of projects together.

1. They were able to work together at a leisurely pace since they were working on the “Prickly Pear Cactus” project.
2. Mori stated that the fact that they were able to take their time playing and focus on the nuances was the ideal circumstance for the two of them.
3. Fujii was born in Tokyo, and she has been enamored with music ever since she was a little girl, albeit she did not instantly succeed at it.

She has a clear recollection of the difficulty of learning classical piano, as well as the fact that some teachers were less encouraging than others. She said that when she was a young adult, one of her classical educators advised her: “If you keep practicing piano, you will be an excellent musician by the time you are my age, which is somewhere around 70.

Everyone has the potential to be a talented pianist. Just keep playing.” Even though it may not seem like much, Fujii’s determination was strengthened by hearing that. During the interview that took place by video the previous month, she was bubbly and ready to laugh. But she said that she is a restless soul and that the only time she feels at ease is when she is producing something.

She stated that, “If individuals are pleased enough with their lives, they probably can just sit down and enjoy a decent cup of tea and be happy.” “I’m not like that. I have to learn to live with my energy in some way, and I have no idea how to communicate this to you.

1. With my work,
2. That’s the thing it makes me happy; doing that gives me the feeling that I’m actually living my life.” Fujii was awarded a scholarship to study music at the Berklee College of Music in Boston after graduating from high school, and he moved to the area in 1985.
3. When she was still a young pianist, she was still working out how to place herself in relation to the jazz heritage.

She hadn’t yet composed much of her own music at the time that she attended a composition master class taught by Chick Corea. Corea was the instructor for the class. She explained that what he meant was that just like we practice playing an instrument, we can also practice writing compositions.

1. At the time, that was really fresh information for me.
2. After some thought, I came to the conclusion, “OK, so maybe I can simply do that.”” It’s possible that the most important factor was just consistently putting in a lot of effort, even when it came to producing music.
3. Credit for the Image.
4. Bryan Murray Or does it not even constitute work? Fujii finds auditory inspiration in a wide variety of places; therefore, the true struggle would be to resist the urge to continuously twist it into something else.

Fujii’s music blurs the lines between abstraction and realism, serving as a type of journal in which she chronicles the sources of her creativity. The process of plucking or scraping the strings of the piano, covering them up as she strikes the keys, and allowing the low, rustling sounds of a horn section to blend into harmony are all examples of abstract expressionist techniques that may be used to music.

1. However, it is balanced by her profound sense of simplicity, which originates from the conviction that she is only transcribing the splendors of the world that surrounds her into musical form.
2. Fujii went back to Japan after graduating from Berklee College of Music and found employment as a teacher and session musician while simultaneously establishing a name for himself in Tokyo as an innovative bandleader.

The next year, 1993, she relocated back to Boston in order to continue her education at the New England Conservatory at the graduate level. There, she received instruction from the prominent pianist Paul Bley, who is known for his aimless and dreamy approach to playing music.

According to Fujii, he recognized something inside her playing that she hadn’t really unleashed yet, and he urged her to remove as much jazz orthodoxy as she possibly could. He did this because he saw something she hadn’t fully unleashed. She reported that he had told her that “You cannot play like some other individual.” “There is a reason to acquire your CD if you play like yourself,” you say on the album.

After her graduation, the two remained in contact, and in 1995 they collaborated on the recording of “Something About Water,” a stunning piano duet that was also one of Fujii’s first albums that she independently published on Libra. Soon after, she began receiving invitations to play in various avant-garde venues in Brooklyn, where she and Tamura would finally settle down to live for the next year and a half.

• She eventually moved back to Japan, but not before setting the groundwork for what would become Orchestra New York, a large band that featured many of the most talented improvisers the city had to offer at the time.
• She has contributed to the creation of several albums with the band, which will be commemorating its 25th anniversary the following year.

She has also been responsible for the upkeep of Orchestra Tokyo, which is made up of musicians from that city, as well as Orchestra Berlin, which she established while she was living in Germany for five years in the 2010s. Fujii’s work is interpreted in a variety of ways by each orchestra, therefore it’s possible that she adapts her composition style accordingly for each ensemble.

Tony Malaby, who plays the tenor saxophone, has been a member of Orchestra New York since the 1990s. According to what he claimed, Fujii’s instructions to the band might sometimes appear to be frustratingly understated, and she recordings very seldom more than one take of each song. According to Malaby, there are instances when he does not fully get the complexity of the music until he hears the recording played again after it has been completed.

He said that one’s ability to imagine the simplicity was lacking. “You’ve completed everything, and you’re on the train, and all you can think is, ‘What the heck was that?'” Malaby proceeded, elaborating on his previous statement by detailing the process of exiting a recording session with the orchestra.

• The CD is sent to you in the mail, and as you listen to it, you realize how strong it is.
• He was blown away by the skill with which Fujii translated the language of her solo piano playing into the language of her big ensembles, in which she seldom plays a note on the keyboard.
• According to what he had to say, “She has transcended the piano with the orchestra,” and it sounds the same when she plays trio or solo.

Fujii has stated that the process of producing a solo album, as opposed to one with a huge band, does not influence her thought process in any way. In either case, the goal is to use music in a way that makes the intricacies of life a little bit easier to understand.

What happened to Futari and Fujii?

Welcome! We appreciate your visit very much! – Hello friends! I am hoping all is well with you and that you are having a wonderful start to the summer. Since our last performance in Europe, it has been 27 months. Fujii returns after a lengthy hiatus by performing five performances and launching a new trio called Trio SAN, which features vibraphonist Taiko Saito and drummer Yuko Oshima.

• The trio emerged out of thin air as a natural extension of the pair known as Futari, which featured Fujii and Saito.
• They went from having two persons play together to having three after extending an invitation to Oshima (in Japanese “futari” means two people, and “SAN” means three).
• This tour will be followed by a busy fall for Fujii, including a live concert in New York City on September 20 and the recording of her 100th album as a leader, which will be released in December 2022.

Fujii and Wadada are going to be performing at the concert and recording it. Ikue Mori, Leo Smith, Kappa Maki, Ingrid Laubrock, Brandon Lopez, Tom Rainey, Chris Corsano, and Sara Schoenbeck are the members of this team. Tamura started off his busy year of recording in April with Eclectic, recording by motsure, which is his duet with Yoshino, who plays the biwa, which is a Japanese lute with a teardrop-shaped body.

1. Yoshino plays the antique instrument in a manner that is fully modern, and the performance is rich and diverse as a result of the striking contrast between the instrument’s brittle textures and explosively rhythmic phrases and Tamura’s intimate jazz melodicism.
2. Sleeping Cat, Tamura’s newest release under the Gato Libre moniker, is just one of several new albums that the Japanese brass player plans to put out during the course of this ambitious year.

Sleeping Cat, which is only available on Bandcamp (https://natsukitamura.bandcamp.com/), was recorded away from the band’s headquarters yet still manages to exhibit the cryptic lyrics and intuitive togetherness that have become the band’s signature traits.

The band’s ninth album is a communal interweaving of pure sound and melody, and it rates among their finest albums. Additionally, this record is only one of numerous cutting-edge pleasures that Tamura will make accessible this year. In the remaining months of this year, Tamura will continue his musical marathon by releasing a new album every other month: https://natsukitamur a.bandcamp.com/ This year marks the 25th anniversary of our record label, Libra Records, and to commemorate the occasion, we are organizing a number of unique events.

When we have more information, we will share it with you. Keep an eye out!