Altitude 1100 Meters to be released on January 24, 2025 via Libra Records.
Pianist-composer Satoko Fujii’s New String Ensemble, GEN, Makes a Stunning Debut on Her Latest Album, Altitude 1100 Meters
“Fujii’s music is unique. . . . she keeps inventing herself, with all her many bands playing totally different things, but all with the same underlying quality and recognizable vision.” – Stef Gjissels, Free Jazz Collective
“Satoko Fujii does not set boundaries and limits to her creativity – passionate and determined to search for every possible exploratory solution of sound, composition and improvisation.” – Guiseppe Mavilla, Scrivere di Jazz (Italy)For the first time in a recording career spanning nearly 30 years, pianist-composer Satoko Fujii has written music for a string ensemble. The group, GEN, which means simply “string” in Japanese, makes its debut on Altitude 1100 Meters (Libra Records, January 24, 2025). It’s a dramatic departure for Fujii, an artist already notable for her stylistic range and depth. The sonorities and textures of violin, viola, and bass, create a new soundscape for Fujii to explore and the music is rich with excitement as she and the group make new musical discoveries. “For some reason I can’t explain, the sound of strings touches my heart deeply, it activates a part of my brain in a way that’s totally different from other instruments,” Fujii says.
Fujii wrote the suite, which celebrates her 65th birthday, in less than a month in 2023 while she was summering in the highlands of Nagano with her parents to escape the lowland heat. A lifelong city dweller, Fujii was enchanted by the mountain views and cool breezes, of course. But she took special inspiration from the very air itself at altitude 1100 meters. “The air’s density, weight, and feeling changes from morning to twilight up on the plateau,” she said. “We live totally immersed in air, but we’re usually completely unaware of it. In that special location, it started talking to me. The five parts of the suite are named for different times of day but the music isn’t meant to be a musical picture of the mountain landscape at different times of day. It’s about how the air made me feel at those times.”
Before Fujii sat down to compose the music, she selected the musicians she would work with. “In my ensembles, including this strings unit, all musicians are great improvisers and composers,” she said. “They each have a strong voice that I wanted to hear in my composition, so when I composed, I was hearing their sound in my mind. I like all the musicians in the band to have an equal role, an equal function, in performing and creating the performance. I also wanted to bring out the unique character of the strings. Strings can easily do some things that other instruments can’t. For example, they can bend notes and play microtones in a way that the piano can’t. I wanted to hear these things from the strings.”
Fujii’s engagement with the unique sounds of the strings is evident throughout the record. For example, Hiroshi Yoshino richly textured bass drone and swooping violin glissandi opens “Morning Haze.” She explores the power and majesty that strings can evoke at the end of “Morning Sun,” as the ensemble grows ever more frenetic in parallel with Fujii’s energized runs and note clusters. The rhythmic qualities of plucked notes explosively punctuate “Early Afternoon.” Each movement of the suite uses a variety of sonorities unique to strings to create nuance and contrast, and propel the flow of one idea to the next. It’s an entirely new sound world for Fujii.
As Fujii said, the band members contribute equally to the music as soloists and interpreters. Violinists Yuriko Mukoujima and Ayako Kato display a command of both traditional and extended techniques and Mukoujima’s lyrical soloes highlight “Twilight” and “Light Rain.” Drummer Akira Horikoshi, drummer in Orchestra Tokyo and a regular member of Fujii’s ma-do quartet that recorded between 2008 and 2013, is the only band-member to have recorded with Fujii before. His experience with the peaks and valleys of Fujii’s multifaceted composing make him especially sensitive to the music’s unpredictable course. Versatile bassist Hiroshi Yoshino can lay down a walking bass line groove, handle the give-and-take of duets, and manipulate timbre with equal ease. Violist Atsuko Hatano is a utility player as well, contributing electronic colorings and a darker tone to the ensemble, and displaying a strong sense of melody when she improvises.
And of course, Fujii makes herself felt as well—in her volcanic eruptions on “Morning Sun,” her fiercely swinging trio episode on “Early Afternoon,” and her sound explorations on prepared piano during “Light Rain.” With new sonic territory to explore, Fujii is at her peak as a composer and improviser on one of her most innovative, wide-ranging, and passionate albums.
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© Shigeko Sekiguchi
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 Hyaku, One Hundred Dreams (Libra) 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. Highlights include a piano trio with Mark Dresser and Jim Black (1997-2009), and an electrifying avant-rock quartet featuring drummer Tatsuya Yoshida of The Ruins (2001-2008). 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. Nearly a quarter of her albums have been with jazz orchestras, prompting Cadence magazine to call her “the Ellington of free jazz.”
Satoko Fujii GEN – Altitude 1100 Meters
Libra Records – Catalog Number: 206-077 Recorded March 14, 2024
Release date – January 24, 2025