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).