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Satoko Fujii Tokyo Trio — Jet Black
(Libra 203-073, 2024, CD / DL)

by Jon Davis, Published 2024-08-09

Jet Black Cover art

Satoko Fujii’s 2021 album with her Tokyo Trio, Moon on the Lake, stands as one of my very favorite out of her many albums, and Jet Black proves that this is indeed a special combination of players. While nominally a standard piano trio with bass and drums, in Fujii’s artistic vision, the tried-and-true configuration becomes a vehicle for highly unconventional jazz. Bassist Takashi Sugawa and drummer Ittetsu Takemura may not be well known outside Japan, but they are apparently in high demand and highly respected, and their work in this trio shows them fully worthy for the task at hand, namely tackling Fujii’s compositions. While she leaves lots of room for improvisation and expression, the composed portions bear little resemblance to standard jazz tunes. These are rhythmically and harmonically complex pieces that draw much more on innovative 20th Century Classical music than on the blues or the standard songbook. But within this highly complex framework, there is an innate sense of melody that is never far from the surface. In both her improvisations and her compositions, she explores what a piano can do, and that same attitude extends to the other instruments. A listener never knows what might happen next, when a frenetic composed section might be followed by an arco bass solo or erratic clicks and clacks from the drums along with piano clusters — there simply are no formulas, and every piece flows in its own unique way. The music is as demanding on the listener as it is on the players — well, that’s surely an exaggeration, though it’s certainly true that Jet Black is about as far removed from romantic cocktail jazz as it can be. Truly jazz without boundaries, this album captures an impressive burst of pure, unfettered creativity that is a wonder to behold.

Filed under: New releases, 2024 releases

Related artist(s): Satoko Fujii

More info
http://satokofujii.bandcamp.com/album/jet-black

 

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