Satoko Fujii's "Hyaku: One Hundred Dreams"

I try to listen to music the way my ex-gallery owner wife taught me to look at art: experience first, then explore the backstory. But that kind of goes against my training as a journo, and I couldn't help but notice from the press release that accompanied this impressive and deeply satisfying CD that this is pianist-composer Satoko Fujii's 100th album (released, like most of her work, on her own label, Libra Records).

Fujii's a late bloomer, and proof positive that creative emergence isn't a timed event. Born in Tokyo, 1958, she didn't release her debut disc, a duet with mentor Paul Bley, until 1996, following studies at Berklee and the New England Conservatory. Besides performing solo, she's led groups that include (but are certainly not limited to) a trio with Mark Dresser and Jim Black, an avant-rock quartet with Ruins' drumming force of nature Tatsuya Yoshida, and a duo and other units with her husband, trumpeter Natsuki Tamura, including his band Gato Libre (on accordion) and the transcontinental free jazz quartet KAZE. Of particular note is her work as a composer for large ensembles, encompassing over 20 albums at the helm of orchestras based in New York, Tokyo, Nagoya, Kobe (her home), and Berlin. 

In 2018, Fujii increased her output on the occasion of her Kanreki (60th birthday year, marking the beginning of one's "second childhood") celebration, releasing a new CD every month, with collaborators old and new. The Covid-19 pandemic spurred her to use home recording, internet collaboration, live streaming, and Bandcamp as ways to overcome isolation and continue creating and releasing work. Her output increased geometrically, including solo works as well as collaborations with Tamura, electronic musician Ikue Mori, bassist Joe Fonda, vibraphonist Taiko Saito, drummer Ramon Lopez, and her trio This Is It! (with whom she recorded an album live over the internet). 

To mark the occasion of her 100th album, Fujii composed a new suite, Hyaku: One Hundred Dreams (the title is Japanese for 100), and recorded it live with a stellar lineup including Tamura and Wadada Leo Smith on trumpets, Ingrid Laubrock on tenor sax, Sarah Schoenbeck on bassoon, Mori on electronics, Brandon Lopez on bass, and drummers Chris Corsano and Tom Rainey. 

While there are moments in the suite (in Parts One and Five) where Fujii allows us to sample the expressive range of her pianism, it's really her mastery of ensemble writing and direction that's on display. She gives all of her collaborators ample solo space, but frames their individual voices in supportive scored passages, and features cathartic episodes of collective improvisation. She divides the group into smaller elements -- a strategy she also employs with her orchestras -- as well as deploying them as a whole. She pens memorable themes, particularly the angular and circuitously winding one that emerges in Part Four and the ascending, valedictory one from Part Five.

The contrast between Smith and Tamura's trumpets -- the former spare and spacious, the latter madcap and humorous -- is striking, while the thunderous interplay of Corsano and Rainey recalls Elvin and Rashied on Trane's Meditations. Lopez skillfully employs the full range of the bass; his arco work is particularly arresting. The sounds Mori generates with her laptop seem to emanate from the surrounding environment or emerge organically from the other instruments' sounds. 

Laubrock is more visceral, less cerebral here than in her own outings, and her encounter with the drummers generates light as well as heat. Schoenbeck is the big surprise among the accompanists. Her melodic imagination and the distinctive timbre of her double-reed instrument -- not often heard in an improvising context -- set her apart; I'm writing myself a reminder to go back and hear her self-titled debut on Pyroclastic from last year. I have a lot of catching up to do with Satoko Fujii as well. It's noteworthy that the most affordable place to buy her CDs appears to be via the store on her website (link above).

FTW, 11.11.2022

It's unsurprising that I'm so late to the party on Ed Hamell aka Hamell On Trial, who played at the Grackle Art Gallery in my neighborhood last night. I've been reliably swinging after the pitch since at least 1970 (listening to the Yardbirds when most of my age cohort was digging Grand Funk Railroad), even when folks whose opinions I respect like my buddy Harvey from Ohio or Justin "Hush Puppy" Robertson, who booked Ed at the Grackle, try to pull my coat. Hush Puppy went so far as to suggest that my wife -- whose favorite performers are Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, Patti Smith, and Laurie Anderson -- might dig Ed. He was right (I went home and played her the live CD that I brought home from the gig). We'll be there when Ed comes back in January.

What surprised me was realizing how inward I've become since the pandemic started. We only started going out to shows again back in February, then after a few weeks there were six months of illness, bookended by the passing of two of my oldest, dearest friends. The shows we attended in February and March reminded me that there's an energy exchange that takes place during any live performance, and my response to those shows was partially a result of feeling overwhelmed (in a good way) by that phenomenon. But after watching some live Hamell videos on YouTube, I questioned whether I'd be up to seeing a performer as loud and brash as Ed in a room about the size of our living room (the Grackle is essentially our house with different stuff in it).

I'm happy to report that at the end of a week when the voters of America, led by the young, came out rousingly in favor of women's right to choose and against election-denying Christofascists -- except here in Texas, where most of the 47% of the registered voters who bothered to cast a ballot chose to continue the abortion-banning, immigrant-targeting, gun-toting status quo -- it felt downright cleansing to hear some good ol' folk-punk rabble-rousing, which Hamell most assuredly brought. But that wasn't all he brought.

Ed Hamell is: 1) a goddamn force of nature; 2) the thread that connects political folk-punker Ani DiFranco, with whom he's toured and for whose label he used to record, and Hickoids supremo Jeff Smith, whose Saustex label released the last couple of Hamell discs; 3) able to spit out lyrics with the velocity of Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan, and Chuck D, and in even greater profusion; 4) as astute (and funny, and obscene, and true) a social commentator as George Carlin, Richard Pryor, and his main man Bill Hicks; 5) the wielder of a percussive right hand attack that renders his amplified acoustic as forceful as an entahr punk band, when he wants it to be; and 6) the father of a 20 year old son named Detroit who grew up touring with his old man when he was out of school and is currently pursuing a doctorate at Yale. You can't make this shit up.

I arrived at the spot half an hour before showtime and found a few folks already seated and focused on the back of the room, where Ed was holding forth while he changed strings (and made sure they were well seated in to maintain his tuning; he pummels them really hard). By the time that was accomplished, the room was full, and he made his way to the front, where his microphone, beat-up 1937 Gibson, and the Grackle's self-service PA awaited. 

I'll start by saying Ed really knows how to work the room -- not just the audience, but the "set and setting." Unlike countless solo acoustic performers I've seen who are either at the mercy of the house mix or incapable of using a mic and a mixer to balance their own sound, he varied the dynamics of his set masterfully, cranking his guitar volume and moving in on the mic for the rabble-rousers, backing it off and moving away for the more intimate moments. Years of touring and playing hundreds of rooms like the Grackle have allowed him to hone his craft.

The other beef I've had with lots of performers (and bands) over the years is that they sound great, but by the time the show is over, none of their songs have made a strong impression. That was hardly the case with Ed, whose songs overflow with observational acuity, skillful wordplay, rage, humor, and dare I say, compassion. I'm not a songwriter; after spending four hours sitting outside my ex-wife's house in the rain waiting for a tow truck, all I could think to write is what I just typed. So when I encounter someone who can pen a line like "dragging the vowel like a thief wrestling a weighted bag of golden chalices down the Vatican steps" ("Mouthy B"), they've got my attention.

"The Happiest Man in the World" starts out like a rip from Ray Charles' "Busted" (it's all folk music, anyway), but turns out to be a rumination on how having friends and living with dignity under difficult circumstances beats having money. "Not Aretha's Respect (Cops)" recounts the efforts of a parent who's "trying to teach [his] kid that there's some authority worthy of respect" when confronted with the occupying army attitude of contemporary militarized policing (like the cops in Uvalde who seemingly thought their job was controlling the brown parents, not rescuing their kids from the AR-15 slinging killer). 

"Whores" puts me in mind of the church in New Jersey my "lapsed" Catholic wife attended as a child, the sign by the door that said "There are no strangers here" in five languages, the liberation theology nun we met there, and my wife's late uncle the priest who once told a woman in an abusive relationship, "Divorce the bastard." (Besides working in a guitar store, Ed says he used to play two folk masses a week. Which put me in mind of the two acid-eating Catholics I've known, who used to attend Wednesday mass "electric" because, one of them said, the church had "the best costumes and rituals.")

I'm now at the age when I like stuff that makes me cry. It happened a couple of times during Ed's set: once during "Ballad of Chris" (sort of a mini-Magic and Loss) because we apparently share a lot of formative experiences, as well as more recent ones like losing old, good friends, and I suck at staying in touch with people; and again during "Hail," Ed's hate crime song (think "a trans kid, a punk kid, and a gay kid meet up for coffee in Heaven"). It's a scary world we live in now, but Ed Hamell assures us that in the room where we've gathered to listen and laugh, "You're safe here" ("Safe"). It gets no better. Music's a deep well; how fortunate are we.

Max Kutner's "High Flavors"

Guitarist extraordinaire Max Kutner is based in Brooklyn, arguably the epicenter of the US creative music universe, where it's still tough to make rent for a creative muso between solo and collaborative gigs. Earlier this year, he released Imaginary Numbers, an EP of blazing fusion with Android Trio, a band with fellow alumni of CalArts and Captain Beefheart's Magic Band. Kutner has also applied his exploratory approach in Zappa and Oingo Boingo legacy bands, but his forte is as a composer (previously showcased in the klezmer outfit Bubbeleh, Near Eastern-flavored Izela, and tuba trio Evil Genius). Now, with the release of High Flavors, at the helm of a top-flight quintet, he makes a major creative statement.

While the material dates back as far as 2017, basic tracks for the album were done in a single September 2021 session at legendary engineer (Swans, White Zombie, John Zorn) Martin Bisi's BC studios, after which Kutner spent a few months crafting overdubs and synth content and integrating samples. He and Bisi mixed the record in three eight-hour sessions early this year. The band -- Eli Asher on trumpet, Michael Eaton on tenor, Kurt Kotheimer on bass, Colin Hinton on drums -- is equally adept at interpreting challenging charts and extemporizing with invention and heat. They inhabit a set of eight Kutner compositions that cover a wide range of moods and colors.

Opener "Deramping" is a complex construction, built on a series of echolalic ostinatos. "A High Point of Low Culture" juxtaposes mutant swing with treated samples and a recording of Kutner's grandfather Art Stevens playing saxophone on a 1984 gig at Mickey Felice's restaurant in Patchogue, Long Island (my teenage stomping ground!). My current favorite track is "In Want of an Interpolative Escape Machine," which displays the most Zappa/Boingo influence of anything here, starting out as a madcap romp that gives way to an extended noise guitar solo, gradually returning to the circus-like theme. "Struggling Sometimes" reminds me of a prog rock version of Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra; the horn writing here is particularly piquant. "Towers Collapse" sounds like a collision between NYC's loft jazz '70s and its experimental '80s. "Less a Moral Lesson" starts out with a knotty theme that gives Asher room for a plaintive solo before Hinton takes a loose-limbed one of his own, then the rhythm section hits a funk groove and the theme returns to take us out.

As Kutner suggests, High Flavors is best experienced "the old-fashioned way," front to back, even in the absence of a physical-media version (which I acknowledge is an ecologically responsible choice, as geeked as I remain on The Romance of the Artifact). Besides being crammed with smart writing and absorbing instrumental detail, it's an exquisitely paced record. Owners of adventurous ears owe it to themselves to hear it.

Dan Weiss Trio's "Dedication"

Back in February, drummer Dan Weiss was one of the performers at the Nasher Sculpture Center's "Sculpting Sound: Twelve Musicians Encounter Bertoia." His duet with Marcus Gilmore was a master class in trap and tabla drumming, as well as an opportunity for the drummers to interact with Harry Bertoia's sounding sculptures. 

Besides backing leaders like Lee Konitz, Chris Potter, and Rudresh Mahanthappa, Weiss leads his own 16-piece ensemble (including several musicians who are leaders in their own right) and the jazz-metal hybrid Starebaby. Since 2000, he's led a trio with bassist Thomas Morgan (a fixture of Bill Frisell's pandemic livestreams who's recently worked with Tennessee sax wunderkind Zoh Amba) and pianist Jacob Sacks (a collaborator since 1995 who also performs in a duo with vocalist Yoon Sun Choi). Dedication, out November 11 on Cygnus, the label Weiss runs with guitarist Miles Okazaki, is the trio's fourth album. The trio has also performed under Sacks' name, served as a rhythm section for fusion altoist David Binney, and was part of the quintet on trombonist Jacob Garchik's album Assembly, released on Yestereve in May.

The nine Weiss compositions on Dedication pay tribute to his inspirations, from family members (his daughter and grandmother) to musical collaborators and influences (Tim Smith of madcap British post-punk band the Cardiacs, composer Conlon Nancarrow, trio pianist Sacks, pop songsmith Burt Bacharach, master drummer Elvin Jones), filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, and George Floyd, whose murder by police early in the pandemic galvanized the world. 

Some of the tributes draw on specific impressions of their subjects: the angularity that characterizes Sacks' lines, Nancarrow's rhythmic complexity, Bacharach's unusual melodic phrasing, an eight-measure phrase Jones played on a Coltrane recording, to which Weiss applies lessons from his 25-year study of tabla. Others deal with more abstract and universal emotions: the wonder of a child's discovery in "For Vivienne," the human condition of grief and loss in "For Grandma May," the spirituality in Tarkovsky's Soviet-era films. The somber, elegiac "For George Floyd" carries a political theme that is new to Weiss' work, but here and throughout Dedication, he and his bandmates blend their distinctive, searching instrumental voices with great empathy.