Torrent
Satoko Fuji (piano)
rec. 2022
Reviewed as a digital download from a press preview
Libra Records 201-072 [53]
‘I really don’t think about genres. I like what I like,” Satoko Fuji
This album raises the question: is this jazz? One easy way of answering it is: yes, Satoko Fuji is a well known jazz pianist so yes it is. But the matter isn’t as clear cut as it seems. If Fuji were playing accompanied by a double bass and drums I would be more inclined to that neat simple answer. But even when playing with a more traditional jazz set up the so called “Duke Ellington of free jazz” won’t be held by genre boundaries mostly devised for the convenience of critics.
Another problem is that for a lot of practitioners of jazz, classical and rock, the old divisions no longer hold. Yes, Fuji’s music on this disc is improvised where one would expect a disc of classic contemporary classical pieces to at least have some kind of score. Even here the old assumptions don’t hold with many classical scores introducing significant elements of chance and the scores themselves starting to resemble visual prompts rather than precise dictation of what the composer wants the performer to do. Only on one track, the penultimate one, does this present recording in any way resemble something that one might feel confident labelling as ‘jazz’. Given that that might be possible because of a similarity to that most genre busting of jazz pianists, Keith Jarrett, the problem just won’t go away.
This is not crossover in the sense of serving up Katherine Jenkins warbling a selection from Aspects of Love and labelling it ‘classical’ because Jenkins sounds a bit like what people imagine an opera singer sounds like. This is serious art music that I believe deserves the attention not just of jazz afficionados but those of us who get our kicks from the classical bit of the musical universe.
It is to be regretted that classical music shed its fondness for improvisation which was such a feature of the musical lives of Mozart and Beethoven and even survived into the time of Liszt. The present recording, remarkably, is a record of Fuji improvising live at a public concert. To orientate the listener, this is not a series of jazz figurations played over blues-based chords. There is barely a blue note on display. Instead these are remarkable, blazing visions – sometimes apocalyptic, sometimes delicate and brittle, sometimes ridiculous and capricious – like crazed cousins of the Debussy preludes.
Perhaps more importantly, each piece is structured more like a classical piece than how one traditionally thinks of jazz. Like a lot of contemporary classical pianists, Fuji spends a lot of time playing inside the piano – often with startling results.
Another influence that goes beyond the merely colourful is that of traditional Japanese music. There are some resemblances to the similarly influenced music of Takemitsu: a sense of stasis and contemplation; an ordering of the events of the pieces in ways other than narrative story telling.
All this said, I would banish all thoughts of other music as what emerges from under Fuji’s fingers is like nothing else.
The thing that will probably surprise – and hopefully delight – those used to contemporary classical is the frenzied energy of both Fuji’s imagination and playing. It is positively Beethovenian in its ferocity. I think a better title for her might be “the Martha Argerich of free jazz”. If the label ‘free jazz’ conjures up unfortunate associations with aimless, tuneless atonal noise, banish them. For Fuji, whether playing alone by herself at the piano or with others, ‘free jazz’ means no boundaries to where she can take her improvisations. Good though her albums with a variety of combos are, I think this one of solo piano is the right one for us classical folk to sample.
Another quotation from this composer pianist I think captures the mood of the album better than I can put it:
‘I feel more comfortable now playing unaccompanied. It’s like looking down into myself. It is deep and quiet – and sometimes very dark.’
The music that emerges out of this deep look into herself is, admittedly, seldom as quiet as this suggests. What I think this quotation evokes is the deeply personal nature of this music. There is nothing cold or calculating about it. What you hear is the pianist laid bare, heart and soul, in a way that makes a lot of other music seem anaemic. And that is why I believe this titanic album is music worth drawing to the attention of readers of MWI.
David McDade
Availability: Libra Records
