On Dog Days of Summer pianist/composer Satoko Fujii reconvenes her fearlessly adventurous avant jazz-rock quartet after an 18-year pause. Out September 13, 2024 via Libra Records, the band’s sixth album features Fujii with trumpeter Natsuki Tamura, bassist Takeharu Hayakawa, and drummer Tatsuya Yoshida.
“Satoko does a great job of writing challenging, quick-changing, progressive/jazz/rock music that this daredevil quartet excels at playing… As always, Satoko Fujii and her extraordinary quartet deliver the goods and keep all of us smiling.” — Bruce Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery
“Fujii’s sound world is a kaleidoscope, and those familiar with her work have come to expect the unexpected. If any artist can be said to meet expectations by upsetting them, she’s one.” — Mike Chamberlain, Coda
On Dog Days of Summer (Libra) pianist-composer Satoko Fujii reconvenes her powerhouse avant jazz-rock fusion quartet for their first recording in nearly 20 years. Getting together again with trumpeter Natsuki Tamura, bassist Takeharu Hayakawa, and drummer Tatsuya Yoshida reminded Fujii of “how much I enjoy playing with this wild quartet.” Indeed, you can hear how much the entire band enjoys themselves—the music is boisterous and full of surprises and comradery. But she didn’t want to simply recreate the music of 18 years ago. “I don’t like looking back,” she says. “I don’t want the band to be fixed in a certain shape. I believe good music needs to be alive, and that means it changes. I want each project I do to be a new step forward.” As much as the music is fun and challenging, it is also fearlessly adventurous as the quartet discovers new ways to travel in the uncharted grey areas between musical genres.
Originally founded in 2001, the ferociously energetic all-star quartet was one of Fujii’s first working bands. They recorded five albums together before she put the band “on hold” in 2007. Although no longer working as a group, the band members remained friends and occasional collaborators (The Fujii-Yoshida duet, Toh-Kichi, released their third recording, Baikamo, in 2019). Then last year, Fujii brought the foursome together again for her Marathon Live event at Shinuku Pit Inn, during which she plays several sets, each featuring a different combination of musicians. In July of that year, they did a short four-city tour in Japan, after which they went in the studio to record their sixth album of new music composed by Fujii.
Fujii’s writing and arranging breaks up the band into different combinations and frequently pulls it in different directions in the course of one composition, but the quartet never loses its sense of togetherness. Each member can take the piece in their own direction but they always circle back to composition, which means there are unexpected turns on every track. It’s music that delights in being off balance, but never toppling over. “Not Together” is playful in tone, but also serious music making, a neat summary of the band’s approach. “Haru wo Matsu” features a duet that contrasts Hayakawa’s rock-inflected lines with Fujii’s pulsing free jazz phrases. It’s a passage of close listening with a nice sense of development and tension and release. The odd-metered jazz-rock extravaganza for the quartet that follows is one of the album’s high points.
© Kazue Yokoi
“Metropolitan Expressway” is a great example of how the disparate personalities in the band can retain their independent identity while creating a unified whole. Yoshida’s funky beat propels the band while Hayakawa surges up from the bottom with his own rocking sense of time and a kaleidoscopic variety of textures and colors. Tamura is white hot using a mute and Fujii weaves in and out with free jazz cascades. It somehow all coheres.
“A Parcel for You” separates the band into bass and drums and trumpet and piano duos alternating thrashing rock and tangled free jazz passages, then merges them for a rousing finale. “Circle Dance” starts quietly with unusual abstract sounds then roars forward on Yoshida’s rocking groove and a dazzling Tamura trumpet solo. Overlapping solos by each band member highlight “Low.” The concluding title track features some rock hero bass lines from Hayakawa and a quartet passage with Fujii soloing as Tamura plays a poignant melody.
© Naoto Sugahara
The Satoko Fujii Quartet is truly an all-star ensemble. Drummer Tatsuya Yoshida, co-founder of The Ruins, has earned an international following as one of the most innovative rock drummers in the world. His unbridled energy has powered some of the most innovative bands in Japan, pushing the boundaries of prog-rock, noise rock, and improvisation. Trumpeter and composer Natsuki Tamura is recognized for a unique musical vocabulary that blends jazz lyricism with extended techniques. In addition to appearing with many of Fujii’s projects and recordings, he is a leader in his own right. Takeharu Hayakawa, one of Japan’s premiere new-music bassists, is a longtime member of the internationally celebrated Dr. Umezu Band and has performed with John Zorn. His many albums as a leader continue to blur genre lines in creative and surprising ways, sometimes hueing closer to avant-rock, sometimes closer to jazz and free improv.
Pianist and composer Satoko Fujii, “an improviser of rumbling intensity and generous restraint” (Giovanni Russonello, New York Times), is one of the most original voices in jazz today. For nearly 30 years, she has created a unique, personal music that spans many genres, blending jazz, contemporary classical, rock, and traditional Japanese music into an innovative synthesis instantly recognizable as hers alone. A composer for ensembles of all sizes and a performer who has appeared around the world, she was the recipient of a 2020 Instant Award in Improvised Music, in recognition of her “artistic intelligence, independence, and integrity.” Frequently cited in the DownBeat Critics’ Poll, in 2024, she ranked high in three categories—piano, big band, and arranger.
Since she burst onto the scene in 1996, Fujii has performed and recorded prolifically. In 2022, she released her 100th album as a leader. On the way to this impressive milestone, she has led some of the most consistently creative ensembles in modern improvised music, including a piano trio with Mark Dresser and Jim Black (1997-2009). In addition to a wide variety of small groups of different instrumentation, Fujii also performs in a duo with trumpeter Natsuki Tamura, with whom she’s recorded nine albums since 1997. She and Tamura are also one half of the international free-jazz quartet Kaze, which has released seven albums since their debut in 2011. Fujii has established herself as one of the world’s leading composers for large jazz ensembles. Fully a quarter of her albums have been with jazz orchestras, prompting Cadence magazine to call her “the Ellington of free jazz.