Matthew Shipp - The Intrinsic Nature of Shipp (Mahakala 2023)

By Gary Chapin

From reviewing an essential Matthew Shipp Trio recording of the 1990s (Circular Temple), I now consider The Intrinsic Nature of Matthew Shipp, which—sorry, I can’t help myself—will be considered essential also, before too long.

It’s intrinsic in a number of ways. All of Shipp’s defining “moves” are here. His penchant for the middle register, his way of putting repetition and substantive anarchy in juxtaposition to one another, his breathtaking—and I mean that literally, sometimes my breath interrupts when he does this—use of the sustain pedal. Also, on display is Shipp’s seemingly unlimited melodic creative gift.

The album is minimal not only because it is Shipp playing solo, but because he seems to be playing in an intentionally pared down mode. Both the right and left hand spin melody lines telling some startling stories, and there is less of (though there are some) the sort of clustery abandon that Shipp can be so good at. Clusters sometimes occur over time, though, like a melody played over a long sustain, becomes a harmony. Shipp’s control of the vertical and the horizontal is out of this world.

It’s a quieter album than some of Shipp’s, but only in density and dynamic, the ideas draw as much attention to themselves as any sonic boom or train wreck might. But the quiet does create a sense of intimacy that’s very seducing. Even when I listen while doing something else—typing this review, for instance—the music often invites me to stare off into space and consider. Wait, I was talking about intimacy. That sounds like introspection. I think maybe the two are essential to each other.

I could be overthinking this. I am prone to reacting strongly to non-musical cues on recordings—titles, images, etc—and there is a track on the album called “The Intrinsic Nature of Shipp,” which, very likely, the recording was felicitously named for. And, honestly, who can say what Shipp was thinking when he named the tune that?

But when you tell me something is “intrinsic”—i.e., belonging naturally or essential—then I’m going to start wondering. Is a solo performance more intrinsic than a trio performance? Do the relationships of the trio make it non-intrinsic? Are our relationships intrinsic to ourselves?

That’s me crossing completely from the line of useful (fingers crossed) critique to me-just-having-a-good-time-writing-about-music.

Whatever the philosophers say, the experience of this album is fantastic and entrancing, and, yes, intimate, in the sense you feel like he’s in conversation directly with you, the listener. (Another relationship!)

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Esbjörn Svensson - Home.S. (ACT Music, 2022)

By Kenneth Blanchard

There are somethings that that brilliant artists should never be allowed to do. Going anywhere near an aircraft is one of them. Scuba diving is another. Between the formation of trio, e.s.t., in 1993 and his death in 2008, Swedish pianist Esbjörn Svensson produced a marvelous body of music. Much of it was recorded posthumously, including several live albums. Apart from a few cuts on a collaboration album (Solo Flights, with Bobo Stenson, Steve Dobrogosz, Anders Widmark), I know of no solo recordings.

Until now. His widow, Eva recently discovered a set of solo pieces composed by Svensson and recorded at his home. Each of the nine tracks is designated by Greek letters going in order from Alpha to Iota. They range in length from about two to seven minutes. I listened to the album with no more information than that.

“Alpha” begins much like the recordings on Solo Flights: gentle and dreamy. It is difficult to imagine a more intimate dialogue that that between two hands in a solo piano work. You get a rich helping of that here. It quickly builds speed, firmness, and clarity, while intensifying the romantic flavor. “Beta” mostly preserves the soft, wistful touch.

“Gamma” is the most striking piece. I get the distinct impression by this point that the beginning of each number is like one or more sketches, before the real painting begins. The full color this time is decidedly blue. It is a slow walk down an empty street, hands in your pockets, round about midnight. The notes are vivid and bright, nonetheless.

“Delta” chases the quarry with a furious and virtuoso speed. It is more abstract than most of the cuts. “Epsilon” shifts back toward romance at the beginning, with an ambiance more reminiscent of the e.s.t. albums. “Zeta” strikes me as the least realized, but it is still fascinating to see this master tightly confining himself in order to explore a simple theme.

“Eta”, the longest track, is a shift from two compositions. The first is all storm and percussive notes, while the second winds out of that into what is more mysterious but just as beautiful.

I’ll leave the remaining tracks for your consideration. Home.S is a marvelous addition to the work of this wonderful artist. Just in case you don’t know the trio albums, here are some suggestions. From Gagarin’s Point of View is said to be his breakthrough album. If you like that one, Winter in Venice will curl your toes. I think my favorite, though, is The Esbjörn Svensson Trio Plays Monk. The first cut, “I mean you,” is the kind of thing you want to hear early in the morning, in a coffee shop a few minutes walk from The Art Institute of Chicago. If they play Home.S instead, that will do just fine. 

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Satoko Fujii - 24 albums reviewed

 By Stef Gijssels

Last year we reviewed several duo albums by Satoko Fujii and Natsuki Tamura during lockdown, we reviewed "The Great Tone Has No Sound" by Polish bassist Rafal Mazur on which both Japanese artists perform, and this we year we shifted our attention to the trumpeter with several albums  for his 70th birthday and for his solo trumpet release. 

As a result, we are a little behind to review the pianist's work, that has been prolific as ever and surprising as ever (actually, while writing this overview, it was hard to keep up with all the new music that she released). The albums below cover a broad scope and breadth of approach and sound, demonstrating the artist's openness of mind, her versatility and her technical brilliance to create music in different sonic environments. 

(It is as if an athlete going for gold in the Tokyo Olympics in a variety of disciplines. Mastering one olympic sport is already a challenge, Fujii is doing the same with modern music, to excel in various disciplines.) 

We will start with some straight solo piano albums, then move to her solo work released this year, which is more avant-garde and minimalist, with her trio, a new duo ensemble called Futari, some quartet work, and then a few albums by larger bands. 

The tone and scope of the music is full of paradoxes and surprises, showing the many faces of the artist: playful, meditative, dramatic, introverted and extraverted, poetic and epic, restrained and exuberant, traditional and ground-breaking, leader and band member, composer and musician, but above all an artist with incredible energy and musical vision. Her music also combines the struggle between the rational and the emotional, the more Appolonian need for structure, form, arrangements and the Dyonisian desire for abandon, freedom, emotional drive and intuitive play. This inherent tension makes her music so often sound like a sonic chiaroscuo of contrasting and even opposing approaches, that still in her hands undergo conflict-resolution through a very coherent focus on the music itself.  The black and the white don't become grey, but they rather intensify their nature by being put next to each other in a way that makes sense. 

Satoko Fujii - Hazuki (Self, 2020)

"Hazuki" was composed and recorded during lockdown last year, at home in her 'piano room'. The overall setting is relatively calm and quiet, a moment of personal reflection, gentle and sensitive, and not gloomy or depressed as one might expect from the context. No, despite the enclosed room in the appartment, and the raging pandemic, the sound is still bright and shiny. One track, "Beginning", is even relatively upbeat, while "Ernesto" moves between calm and moments of dramatic effects. "Expanding" does what it says, playing around with a short phrase and moving it around in her musical universe and back. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Satoko Fujii - Solo Improv (Self, 2020) 

"Solo improv" offers us five relative short improvisations equally performed at home in June 2020. Fujii once told me that she followed her own music's inherent logic instead of having visual images or scenes that she creates (much in the same vein as how Steve Lacy describes his approach to music), but listening to these pieces, and with the titles accompanying them, I cannot help but see a kind of cinematic narrative or structure. Can it be that both composer and listener are right with opposing viewpoints? I guess it can.  

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Satoko Fujii - Solo Concert (Self, 2020)

There is little information about this album. "Moscow" is a thirty-minute improvisation that oscillates between muted and crystal-clear sounds, between dark rumbling of the left hand and the more frivolous right. The suite-like improv evolves full of variation and a natural sense of tension, including the long almost silent middle part, when prepared piano elements come into play, with fragile sustained tones and gamelan-like sounds, as an interlude to bring the piece to a strong and powerful finale. 

The second track, "Maka Fushigi" (profound mystery), is more subdued and quiet, almost meditative, until the very end, when the piece seems to get swept away by some unexpected power. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Satoko Fujii – Emaki (Self, 2020)

"Emaki" consists of two improvised pieces, equally performed in the artist's appartment during lockdown. The first track is thirty minutes, and builds the music up from silence and atmospheric rumblings directly on the strings. The subdued tone is maintained throughout, and its welcoming charm might give this even resonance to music lovers from outside jazz and improvised music. 

Being locked down results a lot in staring through the window, and like here "One Rainy Day" explains the inspiration for the short piece, in the same line as "Drizzle" on "Solo Improv". 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Satoko Fujii – Morning Dream (Self, 2021)

"Morning Dream" brings us eight longer improvised pieces, also created in the pianist's 'piano room' in Kobe. The atmosphere is bright and playful on "No Stopping No Standing", "Camilia In The North Wind",  "Path Ahead" and more subued on "Morning Dream" and "Sunrise". With the exception of a short passage on "Westward", the piano is played on the keyboard itself. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Satoko Fujii – Step On Thin Ice (Self, 2021)

The last album in the solo series so far is "Step On Thin Ice", a title that clearly refers to the winter months, still during Covid and still recorded in Satoko Fujii's piano room. The opening piece and title track reflect the cautious steps on thin ice, the cracking of the ice, and its fragile resonance, the joy of the walker. Playing inside the instrument and on the keyboard give a great nice contrast to make the piece come to life. "Winter Sunshine" is upbeat and "Chasing" is uptempo. "Arpchords" is more serious and dramatic, while "Walking Wagtail" is fun (how is it possible not to see the visuals accompanying this music?). The album ends with the hopeful "Spring Is Right There". 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Satoko Fujii  - Piano Music (Libra, 2021)

In a way, this is not "piano music" at all, considering that it's a collage of piano sounds connected via computer technology, and it is far remote from Fujii's analog approach. “I started recording in my small piano room during the pandemic and while I was editing the recordings, I got this idea,” Fujii explains. “I thought I could put together small parts to make a big work, fitting the pieces together the way I wanted to. I could make music like building with Legos. This may not be a new thing for many creators, but for me it was new because I am a very analog piano player.

Despite the quiet atmosphere of the music, it is full of tension and dramatic effects, soothing and ominous at the same time, meditative and menacing. It is by Fujii's standards, in any case minimalistic, built up with little sounds, and little pieces, to create a larger structure that is not always certain of its own solidity. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Satoko Fujii - Piano Music Vol 2 (Self, 2021)

"Piano Music Vol. 2" continues in the same vein as Volume 1. The digital album offers one long thirty-three minute track, called "Tomeru", which means as much as "to put something on hold for a while". Like the first volume, the music is a collage of recorded piano sounds, and it works beautifully. The multitude of different sounds create a totally new texture to Fujii's music, moving more to sound sculpture, leading the listener to a strange universe that is at once welcoming, familiar and eery, like a Murakami novel. The entire piece also has a strong resonance and reverberation, as if recorded in a cave. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Satoko Fujii & Alister Spence - Any News (Alister Spence Music, 2021)

Possibly closest in sound to Fujii's solo piano albums is this duo release with Australian pianist Alister Spence. The music is also the result of distant co-creation between Sidney and Kobe during lockdown. Spence and Fujii have a long-standing musical relationship, with albums such as Kira Kira's "Bright Force", a duo recording "Intelsat", and Spence's compositions for "Imagine Meeting You Here" by the Satoko Fujii Orchestra Kobe. He also performed as a pianist with Fujii's other Japanese orchestras (Nagoya, Tokyo, Kobe). 

The first track is a quiet and abstract piece, in which the pianos weave sounds together like chimes in the wind, naturally and organically. The second piece is happier and uptempo, with a great loose interaction between both musicians, in which ideas prevail over form. Throughout the album, the music remains relatively accessible, despite its abstract structures and themes. It is obvious that both musicians are focused on themselves, their ideas, their mutual challenges and interactions, more than on creating a collective sound for the benefit of the listener - I have the impression to be on the outside, somewhat excluded from what's happening - but that should not spoil the fun. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Futari ‎– Beyond (Libra, 2020)

But there is more than one innovation in Fujii's music this year. It also marks the birth of Futari, a duo ensemble with vibraphonist Taiko Saito. If I'm not mistaken, this is the first and only piano-vibraphone duo that we have reviewed over the years (but for the interested reader: piano-vibraphone albums have been released by Gary Burton and Paul Bley, Gary Burton and Makoto Ozone, Matthias Ståhl and Sten Sandell, Lewis Wright and Kit Downes). Interestingly, Taiko Saito already released a duet with German pianist Niko Meinhold on one of her earlier albums.

Like with the two "Piano Music" CDs, the approach is minimal, quiet, subtle and built around silence. "Futari" means 'pair' or 'two people' in Japanese. The co-creation of both musicians is quite astonishing. I do not know how much is prepared or agreed or written in advance, but the the effect of their single vision is uncanny, even if it sounds all natural and organic, and to make it even more special, both musicians rely on extended techniques to create strange effects. 

The press release mentions that the collaboration "has been 15 years in the making. Fujii and Saito first met when Fujii was performing in Berlin and Saito was still a student at the Universität der Künste Berlin. They stayed in touch and a friendship grew between them. While Fujii and her husband, trumpeter Natsuki Tamura, moved to Berlin for a few years in 2011, Saito helped them adjust to their new home, but Fujii’s busy touring schedule meant they never got a chance to play. Finally, in 2017, they performed together in Puzzle, a quartet featuring percussive dancer Mizuki Wildenhahn. Saito suggested a duo tour of Japan in June 2019 while she was also home visiting family. Just after the fourth concert of the tour, they recorded Beyond". 

"On the Road", is the only somewhat surprising fully composed piece, rhythmic and with thematic patterns, it is the pivot around which the eight other tracks are organised, like a strong backbone in tradition that has more free improv wings going both ways. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Futari – Futari At Guggenheim House (Self, 2020) 

This album was recorded in June 2019 at the Guggenheim House in Kobe, Japan during the tour mentioned above. The music is understably of the same nature as "Beyond". They take the more European improvisation approach and integrate it in their own cultural legacy. The first track is like the album's cover and zen art: white space with sparse sonic calligraphy, precise and skilled. They give alternative renditions of "On The Road", "Mizube", "Todokani Tegami" and "Ame No Ato", which both also appear on "Beyond". We also get a version of "Aspiration", a Fujii composition that we got to know from her album with the same time title with Wadada Leo Smith, Tamura and Ikue Mori, and which also features on "Moon On The Lake", reviewed above. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Futari - Underground (Self, 2021)

The duo released three extra digital albums, all with the same name, and relatively short. The title of the series refers to the lockdown of last year, with both musicians performing from either Berlin, Germany and Kobe, Japan with the pieces being overdubbed afterwards. The music offers a combination of meditative subdued pieces while others are quite dynamic and I guess a more natural musical habitat for Fujii's energy levels. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Natsuki Tamura, Satoko Fujii & Ramon Lopez - Mantle (Not Two Records, 2020)

"Mantle" is a true collaborative effort between three like-minded musicians: Fujii on piano, Tamura on trumpet and Spanish percussionist Ramon Lopez. In 2019 they toured Japan for nine performances, and the band agreed that each member would write a new composition for each performance, resulting in 27 pieces of which 9 were kept for this album, with each musician contributing three. It was then recorded in the studio on September 22, 2019

The nature of the music is close to the duo albums of Fujii and Tamura, presenting music that ranges from the sensitive, solemn, romantic even at times to powerful and jubilant. The harmonies and themes keep a level of abstraction that allows for easy improvisation and development, allowing for the dynamics and the energy of the music to follow its own inherent logic. Interestingly enough, all compositions start with one instrument, in a rather quiet and slow form, with the two other instruments gradually joining, and once on board the pace and volume increase, as does the rawness of the sound. I tried to identify which musician had composed which piece but I failed miserably, which I hope is more due to the band's capacity to create a single and coherent sound, rather than to my lack of competence. 

Lopez is a drummer who mostly plays around the beat (think of Milford Graves, but often also Jon Christensen or Jack DeJohnette come to mind), and all three are in spectacular form on this album. 

Again, this is an easy to recommend album. 

Satoko Fujii - Moon On The Lake (Libra, 2021) 

I think this is the first trio album with piano, bass and drums that the pianist has released in almost a decade, At the beginning of the century she released several trio albums with Mark Dresser and Jim Black ("Kitsune-Bi" (1999) "Toward, 'To West'" (2000) "Junction" (2001), "Bell The Cat" (2002), "Illusion Suite" (2004), and "Trace A River" (2008)), and one with Tod Nicholson and Takashi Itani ("Spring Storm" (2013)).

After all these year's she's back with another trio, with Takashi Sugawa on bass and cello, and Ittetsu Takemura on drums. Fujii comments on the choice of her trio: "Most of my generation of Japanese jazz musicians are either very conservative or free, sometimes they were like enemies and only a few of them are open to what the others are doing. I like that Ittetsu and Takashi can combine the disciplines and can have fun playing both". And she is right. The music digs deep into jazz tradition, but I doubt mainstream jazz fans will appreciate the more adventurous moments in the trio's music, and there are many of those. 

The opening track is a typically Fujii composition, rhythmic, dynamic, exuberant with a little romantic counter element, with "stops and gos", opening in full force but very briefly, then leaving the space for a long bass solo, by way of introducing Sugawa, then the trio reconvenes for the theme, introducing a drum solo by Takemura, ending with a trio performance allowing Fujii to solo herself.

"Wait For The Moon To Rise" is of a completely different nature. It starts with an atmosphere of dread and tension, conjured by extended techniques on all three instruments, gradually picking up volume and shape, like scultping music out of fog, the theme remain a shimmering presence while the fog does not completely dissipate. 

Her composition "Aspiration", which we mentioned above, gets an 18 minute rendition, with ample space for Fujii to improvise and demonstrate her powerful sense of sensitivity and structural focus, but also with space for bowed bass and excellent percussion work. To the credit of the trio, this remains a very coherent piece with the development and individual excursions closely following the piece's destination. 

"Keep Running" showcases Takemura on drums for the intro, followed by the bass. As its title suggests, the music is uptempo and wild. 

The album ends with the title track, "Moon On The Lake", over which the fog and the darkness return, presented by the extened techniques, with the added vulnerability of quiet emotions. The day has come to a close, peace returns, together with calm and wonder. 

The trio's third date, on September 15, 2020, at the Pit Inn, was recorded for this album.

Like with her Orchestra pieces, Fujii lets the music have full priority, even if it means to take a step back and let the other musicians get center stage. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Satoko Fujii, Natsuki Tamura & Ikue Mori - Prickly Pear Cactus (Not Two Records, 2020)

From trio to trio, from traditional jazz forms to the age of electronics. I am not a fan of electronics normally, and I have often wondered at some of the music made by Ikue Mori. What she delivers is kind of an acquired taste, but you have to credit her for her relentless and often uncompromising approach to music and to sound creation, often disruptive and pushing collaborating musicians outside of their zone of comfort. 

From what I found, the first collaboration between Fujii and Ikue Mori dates from 1999, when the latter made the design of the "Kitsune-bi" album on Tzadik. The collaborated with Mahobin on "Live At Big Apple In Kobe" (2018). The two other musicial collaborations were more recent: "Aspiration" and with Kaze's "Sand Storm"

On this album, the music was generated across continents during lockdown in 2020, with Satoko Fujii sending sound files with piano music to Ikue Mori, who's based in New York and who processed the sounds and added to them, with Tamura on trumpet adding his electronically altered performances. The whole set was then reorganised and post-produced by Fujii in Kobe, Japan. 

It's hard to assess whether my impression of the music's sad and frustrated tone is the result of my knowledge of the lockdown situation, or whether it is deliberately infused in the music. We clearly do not get Fujii's usual bright, extraverted sound. The atmosphere is eery and often dark, with odd sounds, noise and creepy electronics contrasting with the occasional crystal-clear notes from the piano. Fujii's wide span from quiet and lyrical playing to power chords and dramatic runs provide the foundation for a lot of surprises and fascinating explorations. 

A lot can be said about the lockdown, but it definitely led to creative innovations. We're far removed from Fujii's solo albums on this one. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Kaze & Ikue Mori - Sand Storm (Circum Disc, 2020)

Kaze is the French-Japanese quartet with the double trumpet front of Christian Pruvost and Natsuki Tamura, with Fujii on piano and Peter Orins on drums, and with Ikue Mori as a guest musician on electronics. The five musicians had just toured in Europe (Austria, France, Russia) prior to the recording of this album in February 2020 in New York. 

This is the band's fifth album, and as usual the sounds of wind and sea are the inspiration to evoke and transform. That also means that the listener is in for a ride which requires solid footing and at times a tough stomach. 

Both trumpeters are experts at extended techniques on their instrument, including the voiceless breath of wind and air, here enhanced by Mori's electronics, Fujii's rumblings on the inside of her instrument, occasional and arhythmic percussive beats by Orins, and you get the larger part of the opening track. It's fascinating, with a kaleidoscopic change of colours to evokate the strong sound of a hurricane, until suddenly the core theme emerges in its full beauty, with the unison trumpets reinforced by the harmonic chords of the piano. 

The whole album offers brilliant contrasts between inside and outside playing, beautiful themes and the disruptive electronics of Ikue Mori. Some tracks are compact, intense and powerful ("Poco A Poco"), others long sound explorations ("Kappa"). Describing the music is impossible, but it surely figures among the most adventurous, skilled and challenging music today. 

The band's strength is their seamless interaction and vision on their music, however unfamiliar it may sound, but they have been performing together for ten years now. 

To conclude, here are some tips on how to survive a sand storm. It's best to be prepared. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Tobifudo - Tobifudo (Self, 2021) 

Tobifudo is a re-issue of the first album by Satoko Fujii and Natsuki Tamura from 1992, now released on Bandcamp. The quartet further consists of Keiichi Kanai on bass, and Hidemaro Mise on drums. It is a great archival piece, offering us a glimpse into the early past of Fujii and Tamura. Already then, their sense of insistence, instrumental proficiency and compositorial rebelliousness is present without straying too far from post bop as a genre, with integration of some other musical styles, not all necessary within the jazz genre. All compositions are built like narratives full of dramatic changes and stark contrasts in style and tone, all brought with the insistence of young artists who are confident their music should be heard. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Gato Libre - Koneko (Libra, 2020)

True, Gato Libre is more led by Natsuki Tamura than by Satoko Fujii, but for completeness' sake, we love to mention it here. Fujii plays accordion here like on all Gato Libre albums, and the third band member is Yasuko Kaneko on trombone. 

As with all Gato Libre albums, this is also one to savour. Tamura's folk-jazz style is unique and almost universal, in the sense that even if European popular village music of centuries ago shimmers through the surface, it still resonates with people everywhere. The agility of the arrangements and the subtlety of the performances, together with the precision of the musicians continue to make this exceptional and unique music. The music is unhurried, with nothing to prove, no position to claim, no audience to be surprised, just the pleasure of melodies and sound. It almost comes with a guarantee to make you smile. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Wandering The Sound Quintet - What Is (Not Two, 2021) 

Last year we reviewed Polish acoustic bass guitar wizard Rafal Mazur's "The Great Tone Has No Sound", on which one of the four CDs consisted of improvisations by the quintet of Satoko Fujii on piano, Natsuki Tamura on trumpet, Guillermo Gregorio on clarinet, and Ramon Lopez on drums. 

This album continues this very succesful collaboration. It is unclear from the information we received whether this was recorded during the same tour, but it is likely, considering that all musicians are from different parts of the world (Japan, Poland, Argentina). 

The first track is a 44-minute improvisation that meanders between silence, extended techniques on the various instruments, moments of brilliant co-creation when collective ideas arise out of the shimmering sounds that precede them. Fujii's piano is essential as the instrument that keeps it all together, and gives direction to the music. The length of the first piece is worth every minute, because it allows these natural story-tellers to move the music forward and make it evolve, to give it depth, variation, contrast, new avenues and ideas, with every ten minutes a moment of quiet or even absolute silence, making it sound more like a suite. 

The two following tracks are shorter (almost 12 and 9 minutes respectively). "...Wind" is introduced by piano and clarinet, starting gently but picking up force as it moves forward, with bass guitar, drums and eventually trumpet joining. Even if there is a lot of soloing, the collective sound is truly impressive, also in the transitions between solos, duets and full quintet interactions. "... Mind" starts with solo clarinet, free-spirited and joyful, but of course it doesn't stay like that, and the music picks up volume and even reaches moments of violent interaction, with Tamura shouting and using his suppressed trumpet sounds. 

The production of the album is excellent, and despite the different volume of instruments like trumpet and clarinet, their quality is extremely well balanced. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

LEONE Surprise feat. Satoko Fujii, Syvain Kassap & Natsuki Tamura - Live in Paris (Self, 2021)

And now for something completely different (again). LEONE Sauvage is a French mini big band of young musicians who get together for concerts once a month ("Leone sauvage is a wild group of untamed young parisian musicians, dancers, artists, actors...one time a month, a cave of Paris is turned into an anarchique concert, making you dance, making you yell" I read on one of the musician's website), in an atmosphere of Art Ensemble attire, Escalator over the Hill musicianship, and Angles collective spirit. This album has Satoko Fujii and Natsuki Tamura as guest musicians, together with French saxophonist Sylvain Kassap. 

The band consists of Sylvain Kassap, Luise Volkmann, Gabriel Boyault, Pierre-Marie Lapprand, Rémi Fox on saxes, Clement Admirault on trombone, Natsuki Tamura, Jerome Fouqet and Timothée Quost on trumpet, Thibault Gomez on piano, Quentin Coppalle on flute and percussion, Paolo Gauthier on guitare-cithare, Victor Aubert on bass, and Baptiste Thiebault on drums. They all sing as well, sometimes solo, but mostly as a choir. Fujii's role is mostly conducting the band - although she does play some piano - and she composed the second set of the album, while the first set was composed by Volkmann and Coppalle. 

From the very beginning you sense that you are part of something unique, a little strange, a little mad, a little totally out of the box, with a first track that sounds like a hymn or a funeral march, constructed around a quiet vocal piece that is itself surrounded by unravelling horns. It is sad and exuberant, attractive and compelling like village music, something close to people to share their common sentiments of grief, but it is at the same time so over the top that it makes you laugh. With a little reference to "We Will Rock You" by Queen, the next substantive composition is called "Satoko Reborn As A Rock Star", and it is guaranteed to make you laugh even harder. It is fun, it is funny, it is excessive and wild. 

"Zwei Ansätze" (two approaches) starts with the big band in full force, blowing its solemn theme, before the whole thing collapses in itself with chaotic shouting, rhythmic madness, a howling trumpet and the total desintegration of the composition until almost complete silence, after which it puzzles itself back together. 

Fujii herself composed/conducted the next two pieces: "Fukushima Part A" and "Fukushima Part B", music we already know from her Orchestra New York album with the same title, although the delivery here is of a totally different nature. It starts with single instruments creating an eery atmosphere until the full band marches in after around five minutes with the core theme. Despite the difference in composer, the sound of the band remains intact: it is wild, with shouting and singing, consecutive soloing but all with a solid foundation. The finale mirrors the quiet and hesitant intro. The second part is equally strong, equally long, equally contrasting quiet moments of individual instruments exploring their way with high volume power, with collective rhythmic moments and collective singing. 

In short, it is wild, ebullient, joyful and agitated at its core, which make the moments of quiet sadness even stronger. An album of communal joy and sadness. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Satoko Fujii Orchestra New York - Entity  (Libra, 2019)

We will end our review overview with two of Fujii's larger ensemble, starting with Orchestra New York, already the 11th album of this band. It consists of Oscar Noriega and  Briggan Krauss on alto sax, Ellery Eskelin and Tony Malaby on tenor, Andy Laster on baritone, Natsuki Tamura, Herb Robertson and Dave Ballou on trumpet, Curtis Hasselbring and Joe Fiedler on trombone, Nels Cline on guitar, Stomu Takeishi on bass, and Ches Smith on drums. Fujii herself 'limits' her input to composition and conducting. 

Her orchestral music is closer to classical music in its structure and arrangement than to jazz. This is not a big band where all musicians are active all the time, quite to the contrary, the moments when the orchestra performs in full are rather sparse, functioning more like anchor points in between the interaction of smaller subgroups of the band. This gives a wave-like impression, with quieter moments getting the time for a few instruments to interact, carving out themes and ideas that then fully develop in the full orchestral volume. Each time two instruments engage in timbral dialogue or exploratory soloing, against the majestic groundswell of the full orchestra. The intimate converses with the inevitable, the fragile with the solid, the individual with the collective, freedom with planning. Each band member gets his space to solo (maybe with the exception of Tony Malaby?), and Fujii conducts at specific times to bring their collective force to the foreground, sometimes as agreed parts, often as the result of real-time conduction by prior agreed hand signals (to determine length, volume, dynamics). 

Despite the totally different nature of the band, the ambition and the context, Fujii's sonic chiaroscuro is as present with her orchestral works as with her smaller ensembles. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

Satoko Fujii Orchestra Tokyo - Live!! (Libra, 2020)

Thanks to digital platforms such as Bandcamp, the "Live!!" album of the Satoko Fujii Orchestra Tokyo is now also available digitally. The original CD dates from 2006. 

The orchestra consists of Sachi Hayasaka on soprano and alto sax, Kunihiro Izumi on alto sax, Kenichi Matsumoto and Masaya Kimura on tenor, Ryuichi Yoshida on baritone, Natsuki Tamura, Takao Watanabe, Yoshihito Fukumoto and Yusaku Shirotani on trumpet, Haguregumo Nagamatsu, Tetsuya Higashi and Yasuyuki Takahashi on trombone, Satoko Fujii on piano, Toshiki Nagata on bass, and Akira Horikoshi on drums. 

In contrast to "Entity", the music is more composed, more structured and more collective throughout

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

In sum, this is remarkable output again. Fujii's openness to collaborate with others, and her willingness to be challenged by new sounds created by other musicians is only equalled by her musical voice that remains recognisable throughout (even when she doesn't play piano herself). I know you will ask me which albums I would recommend. I'll answer that it depends on my mood and the time of day. I hope the descriptions above will guide the interested listener to the music she or he likes. 

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Kjetil Mulelid - Piano (Rune Grammofon, 2021) ***½

By Martin Schray

Not only for fans of Keith Jarrett it was sad news that the probably most popular and most famous jazz pianist of the last 50 years had to announce that he wouldn’t be able to perform live any longer and wouldn’t release new studio recordings either. The New York Times had reported in a detailed article on 10/21/2020 that Jarrett had suffered two strokes within a few months in 2018, from which he hadn’t recovered by that time. For Jarrett aficionados it may be a consolation that almost all of the maestro’s concerts have been recorded by his record company ECM in recent years and that there will be further releases from this archive, such as the Budapest Concert, which was published last year.

However, the question remains: Who might be able to fill Jarrett’s shoes? Of course, there already are big names lined up: Vijay Iyer, Brad Mehldau and John Medeski might come to mind, maybe James Francies or Kris Davies. And there’s a new name to consider - Kjetil Mulelid. Though he was only 29 years old when composing and recording Piano, his first solo album, Mulelid is one of the brightest talents in Norwegian jazz. First he was skeptical when Rune Grammofon, his record company, suggested a solo piano record back in early 2018, but thought it over during the pandemic since other projects had to be postponed. Most of the compositions on the album were written in a lockdown period and recorded within one day in the legendary Athletic Sound studio on their characteristic vintage Bösendorfer grand piano.

Piano is a promising start for a solo premiere, even if it’s very reminiscent of Keith Jarrett’s Köln Concert. Like his obvious role model, Mulelid shifts gravitationally between major and minor chords. These major and minor voices are polyphonically interwoven and excessively spread. The result is a mixture of meditative and ecstatic sound worlds. Pieces like “Beginning“ present motifs of hymnal intimacy as well as outbursts and thrills of dramatic wildness. Impressionistic floating sound paintings are displayed even if Mulelid’s pieces lack Jarrett’s exorbitance. The music is often based on simple patterns and pure triads, but this is by no means kitschy, since Mulelid’s compositions breathe a great sense of purpose. Themes are quickly developed, continued and transferred into the following one. There are, of course, the floods of melody-drunk sounds like in “Point of View“ and some material could have been a bit smokier and more adventurous. However, sometimes one also yearns for simple, harmonic beauty, which is served without restraint on this album.

It’ll be really interesting to follow Kjetil Mulelid’s career, he might become one of the big names in future jazz. Next stop: ECM.

Piano is available on vinyl and as a CD. You can buy it from the label: https://runegrammofon.com

Listen to “Beginning“ here: 

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Benoît Delbecq - The Weight Of Light (Pyroclastic, 2021) *****

 By Stef Gijssels

French pianist Benoît Delbecq is one of those musicians whose sound is immediately recognisable. Over the decades, he firmly established his own signature sound. This effect is even stronger on a solo album such as this one, his first in more than a decade. Apart from using a prepared piano, with muted strings and strong percussive effects, his other unique aspect is the sparse lyricism of his compositions, using a limited number of notes to convey something meaningful. 

"The Weight Of Light" has a double origin. His brother, a physicist did his PhD thesis on the mass of light. (On a side note: the relationship between physics and free improvisation should also be the topic of some further research, as many artists are inspired by its rational mystery or mysterious science). The second is the actual movement of light over objects, as with the mobile on the cover of the album, or the movement of a cloud behind the stained glass windows of a chapel, making the light and shadows move inside. 

Despite its easy and light-footed sound, the music is actually relatively complex, with polyrhythms and irregular and shifting patterns, built quite consistently throughout the pieces. They reflect his idea of the mobile on the cover, with its relatively stable structure constantly changing because of internal movement and the external effect of shifting light and shadow, while staying the same object. 

Interestingly enough, the album is accompanied by a one hour documentary on the creative process and techniques used on the album, and I can recommend to watch it (below). It's in French, but with English subtitles and the occasional piece of interview in English. 

Light can be seen as a source of energy, but also as a source of solutions and perspectives. Delbecq is clear that his music is not the expression of his emotions, except for the personal pleasure in structure, form and intrinsic beauty. A kind of "l'art-pour-l'art"without other motives or intentions. The emotional response that the listener has is welcome, but very personal and not designed to happen. 

His music is light, bright even, with a certain pulse, not rhythm, because it has to be more free, less constrained, and once you think you have it, it's gone and replaced by something equally intangible but similar, moving, offering, ever changing perspectives on the same topic. 

Delbecq has his own approach to conceptualise and graphically structure his compositions. Like Bach compositions, there's something scientific about the way patterns are invited to interact, even if Delbecq is more loose and jazzy in his delivery. He draws circles with specific size differences and areas of overlap, within which he draws a coloured route to connect the various circles as the piece moves forward. “When I’m composing, it’s exactly like I’m looking at inventing the future shape of an object,” he says, “so I look at it from different places. It’s like a 3-D way of conceiving things that has to do with optical phenomena. If I move around it, it will reveal shapes that are hidden at other angles.”

This results in music that is playful, creative, fresh, full of surprise and with an inherent lightness despite the percussive elements. It doesn't lead you anywhere, there is no built-in tension, no real development or evolution towards a grand finale, but small particles of pleasure, polyrhythmic joy and poetry: an apparent simple surface structure built on a deceptively complex foundation. As a listener you often wonder which hand does what on the piano and how he builds his lyricism around the muted and unmuted strings. When you watch the video, you can see that he does both with one hand even. 

To understand his sense of nuance and subtlety, Delbecq writes he "drew the record cover pretty fast, but the shadow took me days. I wanted to render something mysterious about the shadow of this mobile.” His music has the same attention to detail, however small, fragile and insignificant it may seem. When you reduce music to its essence, every detail gets more weight. Check out the attention given to the wooden objects used to mute the strings, and his obvious reference to the African balaphon. 

Delbecq's music is beyond categorisation, and a true delight. 

Don't miss it!

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

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Matthew Shipp - The Piano Equation (Tao Forms, 2020) *****

By Lee Rice Epstein

It’s nearly impossible to write about pianist Matthew Shipp without at least nodding towards 2020 marking his sixtieth year (a milestone that properly arrives in December). Although not on the same scale as Satoko Fujii’s kanreki project, which saw her celebrate sixty years with twelve new albums, Shipp has planned a number of releases in 2020, including two for Whit Dickey’s Tao Forms label. The first is The Piano Equation, a solo album featuring eleven new improvisations. More numbers: it’s twenty-five years since Shipp went into the studio to record Symbol Systems, his first solo piano album. Some tracks on The Piano Equation are four minutes long, unless they’re three, five, or seven (four plus three). Yet, as soon as a numerological structure appears to reveal itself, it falls apart, clustered and dispersed, cyclical, until it isn’t. That’s the fragile, fractal beauty of Shipp’s music. Shipp has talked about the center of his music being life itself. Attempting to impose a cosmology onto his mode of improvisation isn’t beyond the pale, but what continues to mark him as one of the most fascinating artists is how he never stops reaching, not once in thirty years, no matter how far out of grasp answers may lie.

As a soloist, Shipp is undeniably remarkable. Free improvisation is sometimes dogged by its most famous practitioners (how many quasi-Ornettes and faux-Aylers have passed through these hallowed halls), yet Shipp has always seemed to exist within and alongside the main streams. On the opener, “Piano Equation,” the heart-stopping gorgeousness of some passages gives way to a curious, rhythmically constrained coda. “Swing Note From Deep Space” sets 100 years of jazz piano on fire, less effigy than passionate reconfiguration. Like Cecil Taylor, he draws on influences now 100 years old, inflecting his uniquely cellular playing with elements of stride and swing. Shipp’s musical language, however, is completely different from Taylor’s, even if they share some of the same alphabet. “Piano In Hyperspace” begins with moments of lightness and exploration, then subtly reflects back motifs from “Piano Equation,” and a cosmic order begins shifting into place.

Some of The Piano Equation’s finest moments come as a result of the closeness of the recording, which perfectly captures Shipp’s presence at the instrument. “Land of the Secrets,” for instance, offers listeners an open, warm-toned piano contrasted with angular pedalling. The details captured in the recording make for an inviting experience, one of Shipp’s finest solo albums, in a long line of very fine solo albums. Jim Clouse of Park West Studios has worked with Shipp for about 10 years, and he’s become an attentive collaborator. The range of dynamics and alternating silences of “Tone Pocket” settle into a passage of meditative sustained clusters, and Clouse captures all of it with care.

The final three tracks play out their own cosmic triptych. “Radio Signals Equation” is one of the more challenging performances from Shipp, daring listeners to keep track of its signal through the noise of competing arcs. “Emission” responds to itself with tight flocks of high notes, fluttering off the keyboard. Then, “Cosmic Juice” affords another glimpse of the whole, with its bold and striking opening and deep, bellow-like rumbling. Although there are no seemingly direct references or recurring motifs, the whole represents Shipp’s palindromic approach, like the universe itself: big bang to heat death, radio to gamma waves, cosmic to terrestrial.

Order direct from Tao Forms / Aum Fidelity

Or from your nearest brick and mortar shop.

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Recent Solo Piano Albums from Elsewhere

By Eyal Hareuveni

The Elsewhere label offers for its first year anniversary new ways of listening, experiencing or perceiving new and innovative languages and discourses of composers and musicians who compose or play the piano.

Shira Legmann / Michael Pisaro - Barricades (elsewhere, 2019) ****½

The concept of Barricades began to crystallize when Israeli pianist Shira Legmann sent American experimental composer Michael Pisaro a list of her favorite music and included Les Barricades Mystérieuses by French Baroque composer François Couperin (1668-1733). Legmann’s wide repertoire encompases not only compositions from the Baroque but also Olivier Messiaen's Vingt Regards sur l'enfant-Jésus, György Ligeti's keyboard music, Morton Feldman’s late repertoire and Giacinto Scelsi's piano music. Pisaro himself loved the idea of composing a web-like texture that refers to Couperuin’s polyphonic technique of overlapping and interlocking voices.

Pisaro compared the process of composing and working with Legmann on Barricades to “watching the barricades, which I pictured as a network of twisted vines, unravel.” Barricades consists of thirteen “studies” for Legmann’s piano with some sine waves played by Pisaro himself, who adds two interludes where he plays the sine waves. The album was recorded by Pisaro at CalArts, California on March and April 2019, later mixed and mastered by Pisaro.

Pisaro’s subtle, ethereal sine waves sound as organic extension of Legmann’s clean and supple piano presence. Legmann navigates wisely the enigmatic atmosphere of Barricades as if she is determined to blur the transparent sonic barricades between the dramatic and the cool and restrained, between the emotional and the cerebral or between the distant and what may be considered close. Her “studies” with Pisaro’s eerie “interludes” suggest a fragile balance between these somehow abstract concepts. Together, these pieces reflect the very nature of Barricades, a poetic attempt to create a captivating network of sonic vines that grow in their own accord and intensify by their inner logic; a network of pieces that not only echoes the French Baroque but also flows in a unique, fragile equilibrium. A dreamy and hypnotic, Feldman-esque equilibrium between the concrete and the imagined, the acoustic and its electronic extension, the earthly and the celestial.

Melaine Dalibert - Cheminant (elsewhere, 2019) ****

Cheminant presents the diverse aesthetics of French pianist-composer Melaine Dalibert. This is the third solo piano for elsewhere, following his first one for the elsewhere label that focused on one, extended composition, Musique pour le lever du jour (2018), and his debut one, Ressac (Another Timbre, 2017). The five pieces on Cheminant, all composed by Dalibert between 2017 and 2019 and recorded in Saint Maugan, France in February 2019, can be considered as studies in different schools of minimalism. These pieces reflect Dalibert’s interest in questioning how the harmonic shifts could affect the listening experience with subtly evolving chords through a scale or different tones, creating a similar state to vertigo.

The first four pieces of Cheminant are dedicated to colleagues and friends. The opening one, “Music in an octave”, is dedicated to David Sylvian who designed the artwork and advised about the mixing, and corresponds with Sylvian’s latest, poetic abstract-ambient works with its prolonged, resonating and meditative sounds. “Percolations (for right hand)”, for elsewhere founder, artistic director and producer Yuko Zama, is a rhythmic piece that sound as if it dances around itself until losing any sense of direction, “From zero to infinity”, dedicated for American post-minimalist composer Peter Garland, returns to a slow, minimalist mode that calls for another meditation about the accumulated effect of such listening experience. The longest, 21-minutes title-piece is dedicated to Dutch fellow pianist and composer Reinier van Houdt and expands even further and wider the enigmatic meditative ambience, as the highly disciplined delivery of single notes, their resonating sounds and their overtones float slowly through the deep space of the recording studio, gently disappear within each other. Dalibert performs this study in deep meditation with great control and exquisite beauty. The last piece “Étude II” is an exception with its up-tempo, almost playful insistence on repetitive hammered chords.

Reinier van Houdt / Bruno Duplant - Lettres et Replis (elsewhere, 2019) *****

Lettres et Replis captures a unique correspondence - literally - between French composer Bruno Duplant and Dutch pianist-composer Reinier van Houdt. This correspondence combines three Lettres (2017) - letter-form scores personally addressed from Duplant to van Houdt and containing letter sequences distributed across the page, with three more Trois replis d'incertitude (2018) - three letter-form scores but with the notion of 'repli' (meaning 'fold' in a Deleuzian postmodern Baroque sense, as well as 'withdrawal' of incertitude and reactionaries toward the neglect of ecology, humanism, and culture).

Duplant's realization of these ‘reading’ and ‘replying to' scores scores also reflect French symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé's notion of textual space and chance, leaving a large room for the interpreter-performer. “The Lettres are connected to a melody spelled out and read in all directions propulsed by memory and gaze”, says van Houdt. “The Replis are connected to the harmonies from a place as they permeate and unravel through the metaphorical holes made by writing, linearly arranged again with recordings of a walk along the river that traverses this place”. The Replis also contain field recordings by van Houdt made on John Cage's 100th birthday on September 5, 2012 along the Maas Harbour in Rotterdam.

This mysterious, contemplative and delicately nuanced piano solo kind of correspondence is performed majestically by van Houdt. He lets the translucent overtones and rich resonances offer a sweet melancholy and nostalgic colors and shades, and only “Lettre 2” adds a fragile dramatic undercurrent to to the quiet exchange of cryptic thoughts and ideas. The words are morphed into a highly personal, suggestive language where “destruction and meaninglessness precede all possible worlds”.

You can trust van Houdt. He sure does know how to draw you into his fascinating musical world.

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The Solo Piano Research of Søren Kjærgaard

By Eyal Hareuveni 

Danish, Copenhagen-based pianist-composer Søren Kjærgaard researched the concept of Multi-layeredness in Solo Performance at the Rhythmic Music Conservatory in Copenhagen in the years 2016-2018. During his research project he has performed solo piano recitals and given talks on his research in Tokyo, Oslo, San Francisco, Zürich and Copenhagen. This research yielded two distinct solo piano albums.

Kjærgaard is known from his trio with double bass player Ben Street and drummer Andrew Cyrille, which has recorded four albums, his work with Danish multi-disciplinary artist Torben Ulrich (father of Metallica’s drummer Lars Ulrich), which has born three albums, and his free-improvised performance with Fred Frith, Koichi Makigami and Jakob Bro.

Søren Kjærgaard - Concrescence (Ik Music, 2019) **** 

Concrescence was recorded at The Village studio, Copenhagen, on 14-15 July 2017, and offers 18 introspective, concentrated micro-cosmoses that unfold in a dialogue between composition and improvisation, between concept and the immediacy of the moment. 

The short pieces point to the rich language Kjærgaard has developed and the diverse influences that shape his aesthetics, ranging from the iconoclastic ideas of Morton Feldman’s evocative minimalism, to the dense chord clusters of Henry Cowell and the indeterminacy of John Cage, to the contemporary voices of improvising, classical pianist Cory Smythe and contemporary composer Nico Muhly, known for his collaborations with Björk, Grizzly Bear and Glen Hansard. 

Kjærgaard weaves these distinct attitudes into a rich and highly personal thesis about the multi-layered potential of the solo piano format. He employs conventional and extended techniques as a mean to suggest a provocative yet subtle interplay between movements, speeds, textures and dynamics, as well as between avant-garde, scholastic innovations and more song-like but still experimental textures. Piece like the minimalist and exotic “Precipitations”, the lyrical ballad “From Ornette To Sun Ra By Way Of Miss Ann South” or the emotional homage to Cowell, “Bells for Henry,” capture best Kjærgaard's idiosyncratic language. 

 

Søren Kjærgaard - Live at Freedom Music Festival (Ilk Music, 2019) ****½

Live At Freedom Music Festival captures Kjærgaard performing at KoncertKirken, Copenhagen, on September 1st, 2017. It focuses on six extended improvisations, linked as a five movements suite, that explores a more extroverted and contrast-full use of the piano. 

The live format enables Kjærgaard to explore his deep interest in the tension between different experimental approaches and techniques of playing the solo piano, free-improvisation, and modern jazz. The “First and Second Movement” investigates Feldman-esque expressive, ethereal, and almost silent minimalism. “Third Movement” dives first deeper into the indeterminate, chance-based compositional ideas of John Cage and David Tudor, but later sketches basic rhythmic patterns. On these cerebral pieces Kjærgaard investigates the sonic timbral qualities of the piano, attentive to the singing potential of each tone. 

The last shorter three movements - “Fourth” through “Sixth” - connect the contemporary, experimental approaches with a great lineage of revolutionary jazz pianists. The dense tone clusters of Henry Cowell sound as part of the poetic aesthetics of Cecil Taylor and Paul Bley. The last, most lyrical and emotional “Sixth Movement” converges best Kjærgaard’s imaginative, spontaneous ideas of rhythmic flexibility, abstract minimalism and cantabile melodicism. 

And a litte more here.  

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