Keiji Haino / Natsuki Tamura – What happened there? (Libra, 2025)
Japanese trumpeter Natsuki Tamura was born in 1951, a year before fellow
Japanese, iconic guitarist Keiji Haino. Both Tamura and Haino are known
as free spirits with strong-minded, experimental approaches,
unrestrained by convention and embracing psychedelic and avant-rock,
free jazz, and free improvisation to a point that blurs any genre
distinctions. They also share a deep interest in folk music from all
over the world and are known for their eccentric, often provocative
performances.
But despite their rich careers and extensive, collaborative works, they
did not play together until Tamura and his partner, pianist Satoko
Fujii, invited Haino to their annual, daylong marathon festival at
Tokyo’s legendary Shinjuku Pit-Inn club in January 2024. Tamura and
Haino did not talk much before beginning to play the free improvised
set.
Haino, with only his electric guitar and vocals, and Tamura, on trumpet,
vocals, and kitchen utensil percussion, enjoy this
adventurous-surprising meeting, with its reckless energy, absurdist
humor, and profound, lyrical beauty. There is no telling what these
gifted improvisers will do next, but they listen carefully to each
other, and they are wise enough to color or subvert each other’s ideas
in unpredictable, poetic gestures, without seeking explosive, cathartic
climaxes, but a compassionate, conversational union of magical sounds.
They clearly enjoy the intense, often openly emotional dialog of
contrasts, and the opportunity to explore unusual timbres and textures
within the risk-taking, free-associative flow of ideas. Brilliant.
Satoko Fujii GEN – Altitude 1100 Meters (Libra, 2025)
Pianist-composer Satoko Fujii’s first suite for a six-musician string
ensemble GEN (弦 – gen – means string in Japanese) celebrates her 65th
birthday and fulfills her dream to play with such an ensemble. Fujii, a
lifelong city dweller, composed the five-movement suite in the summer of
2023 while vacationing with her aging parents in the highlands of
Nagano, on the western side of Japan’s main island, Honshu, at an
altitude of 1,100 meters, enchanted by the mountain views and the cool
breezes, away from the city heat.
Fujii was inspired by the unique, ethereal atmosphere of the Nagano
mountains and wanted to mirror the unique atmosphere and the
ever-changing landscapes of the day into the delicate, vibrating
sonorities of string instruments, and her prepared piano, that can bend
notes and play microtones. She composed this suite on a small electric
piano., and says that the sound of the string instruments “activates a
part of my brain in a way that’s totally different from other
instruments”.
Each movement uses distinct sonorities of the two violinists, the
violist (who also contributes electronic colorings) and the double bass
player, who often employ extended bowing techniques, to create
haunting, evocative nuances and contrasts and propel the dramatic flow
of the suite. The music unfolds patiently and skillfully employs the
strings spectrum of the ensemble. It is mostly introspective and leaves
enough space for individual and collective improvisations and the
commanding individual voices of the ensemble. This was done so
masterfully when the only musician in the ensemble, except Fujii, who
had played with her before is the drummer Akira Horikoshi, who had
played with Fujii in her Orchestra Tokyo and Fujii’s ma-do quartet.