release date: 17.09.2021 via Libra Records
Pianist-composer Satoko Fujii’s Bold Experiment with Sound Collage and Prepared Piano
“…magical, unfamiliar sounds that can stimulate your sense of wonder and affect your emotions . . .” — Barry Witherden, Jazz Journal
“Fujii’s music troubles the divide between abstraction and realism. Plucking or scraping the strings of the piano; covering them up as she strikes the keys…. All of this amounts to abstract expressionism, in musical form. But it’s equaled by her rich sense of simplicity, sprung from the feeling that she is simply converting the riches of the world around her into music.”
—Giovanni Russonello, New York Times
Pianist-composer Satoko Fujii is often quoted as saying that she “wants to make music no one has heard before.” She more than fulfills that goal on her latest solo album, Piano Music, out September 17 via Libra Records. Using short pre-recorded snippets of her prepared piano music, she edits them together to create a patchwork quilt of unique sonorities. The results are unlike anything she has done before—two extended pieces of otherworldly piano sounds and melodies that evolve so smoothly and organically you can’t tell they’re stitched together from smaller fragments.