SATOKO FUJII - Piano Music
Libra Records CD 201-067
Satoko Fujii, Solo Piano
Recorded at her home in Kobe City, Japan, in March 2021
A prepared piano is a piano with objects, preparations, placed on, or in-between the strings, altering the resonance of the piano. Early examples included Henry Cowell’s playing the keys with his forearms or elbows, or by-passing the keyboard and playing the strings directly. Another American composer, John Cage, introduced to the keys such objects and materials as bamboo, bolts, cloth, nuts, plastics, rubber, screws, wood and etcetera. Cage was the first to use the system to generate a composing method and practice and to establish such practise as a norm.
Avant-garde pianist Satoko Fujii is the exemplar of contemporary prepared piano and her work has been described as “music that no-one has heard before”. It comes from wherever, be that Avant-jazz or experimental rock, modern classical, Japanese folk and of course free improv, any source really that demands inquisitiveness, originality and spirit. Into this she blends and weaves, with flair, levels of anonymity, tranquillity and uncertainty. The result is unpredictable and delightful.
The composition or construction of Piano Music was achieved by recording short improvisations played on the strings instead of on the keys, plucking with the fingers or striking and stroking directly with various objects, then computer-processing her short recordings into two longer pieces. Shiroku and Fuwarito are as similar as they are different. Their similarity arises of course from the strangeness and charm of the auditory ‘colours’ from their sound ‘palette’; the differences depend on the varying tensions which each generates. Shiroku has a cloudlike looseness, its form defined from within. Fuwarito is much more energetic, its pressures derived from the relative harshness of each sound which impress, rather like the effect of a pneumatic drill.
Described by Steve Greenlee, of the Boston Globe, as “…one of the most original pianists in free jazz…”, and by Alan Young, of the New York Music Daily as “...simply one of the most important composers of our time....”, Satoko Fujii is a momentous landmark in the inevitable evolution of jazz. She is bewilderingly creative, indefinable, inexorable and inspiring: she really must be heard.
Reviewed by Ken Cheetham
Libra Records CD 201-067
Satoko Fujii, Solo Piano
Recorded at her home in Kobe City, Japan, in March 2021
A prepared piano is a piano with objects, preparations, placed on, or in-between the strings, altering the resonance of the piano. Early examples included Henry Cowell’s playing the keys with his forearms or elbows, or by-passing the keyboard and playing the strings directly. Another American composer, John Cage, introduced to the keys such objects and materials as bamboo, bolts, cloth, nuts, plastics, rubber, screws, wood and etcetera. Cage was the first to use the system to generate a composing method and practice and to establish such practise as a norm.
Avant-garde pianist Satoko Fujii is the exemplar of contemporary prepared piano and her work has been described as “music that no-one has heard before”. It comes from wherever, be that Avant-jazz or experimental rock, modern classical, Japanese folk and of course free improv, any source really that demands inquisitiveness, originality and spirit. Into this she blends and weaves, with flair, levels of anonymity, tranquillity and uncertainty. The result is unpredictable and delightful.
The composition or construction of Piano Music was achieved by recording short improvisations played on the strings instead of on the keys, plucking with the fingers or striking and stroking directly with various objects, then computer-processing her short recordings into two longer pieces. Shiroku and Fuwarito are as similar as they are different. Their similarity arises of course from the strangeness and charm of the auditory ‘colours’ from their sound ‘palette’; the differences depend on the varying tensions which each generates. Shiroku has a cloudlike looseness, its form defined from within. Fuwarito is much more energetic, its pressures derived from the relative harshness of each sound which impress, rather like the effect of a pneumatic drill.
Described by Steve Greenlee, of the Boston Globe, as “…one of the most original pianists in free jazz…”, and by Alan Young, of the New York Music Daily as “...simply one of the most important composers of our time....”, Satoko Fujii is a momentous landmark in the inevitable evolution of jazz. She is bewilderingly creative, indefinable, inexorable and inspiring: she really must be heard.
Reviewed by Ken Cheetham
