Mind Meld: Satoko Fujii-Joe Fonda Duo with Natsuki Tamura

One of the most remarkable things about the musicians we work with is the sheer number of miles travelled in service of their art. Part of the reason they traverse the globe is because the market for creative music is small and dispersed. If a musician could make a decent living performing exclusively near their home town, there would be less imperative to deal with airports, time changes, onerous visa policies, carbon footprints, and wear and tear.

But the flip side means we here in rural western Massachusetts get the opportunity to hear international artists ply their craft. Such was the case on Monday, February 10, when Japanese pianist Satoko Fujii joined with bassist Joe Fonda and trumpeter Natsuki Tamura to deliver a 90-minute master class on improvisation. The concert at the Northampton Center for the Arts marked the half-way point of season eight of Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares.

The first two-thirds of the evening featured Fujii and Fonda exploring multiple moods and sonorities. Their playing ranged from loud to soft and mellifluent to discordant. They produced sounds conventionally and unconventionally. Fujii pulled what looked like a guitar string against strings inside the piano to produce eerie sounds that were echoed by Fonda’s arco bass playing.

The level of simpatico between the two was remarkable. I felt slightly voyeuristic, as if listening in on an intimate conversation between two accomplished musicians playing without ego, with nothing to prove, just an interest in engaged exchange. As he readied to reenter after a solo piano interlude, Fonda pulled out his bow, listened, smiled, then put it away without playing a note. Nothing more needed to be said.

Fujii is a diminutive powerhouse of a pianist. She came through the Valley in 2011 and 2012, performing as part of the Northampton Center for the Arts’ A World of Piano solo piano series, and then in duet performances with her husband, Tamura, and violinist Carla Kihlstedt as part of the UMass Solos & Duos Series. In 2018, in celebration of her 60th birthday, a milestone known as Kanreki in Japan, she produced one recording a month for a year.

One of them, Mizu, was a duo with Joe Fonda. Their latest, 4, is, as the title implies, their fourth together. Within five short years the two have developed a natural telepathy, anticipating each other’s direction and exploring a full range of jazz expression.

Joe Fonda lived in the Pioneer Valley for about a decade starting in the mid-1970’s and has been a regular visitor since. As I remarked to a friend after the concert, I have never heard him give a less than inspired performance; he lifts every bandstand he’s on. His body language, facial expressions and the sounds he produces are genuine manifestations of a blithe musical spirit.

During the concert, played without pause or applause, Fonda delivered a semesters-worth of bass lessons. His liberal use of arco playing worked especially well in this context, providing a plaintive vocal quality that upped the emotional ante. At times his pizzicato playing was so quiet, and so clearly articulated he sounded alone in the room.

About an hour in, a new, beautiful strand of sound emerged. Looking back and forth from Fujii to Fonda to try to identify the source, we realized a third voice had joined the fray. After a few minutes, Tamura ambled out from behind the black baffle and joined the duo on stage. The fact that we could not identify the mysterious sound as trumpet-based is not surprising. Along with Peter Evans, Nate Wooley, Axel Dörner and a few others, Tamura has revolutionized sound production on his instrument. His duet with Fonda on flute (sans mouthpiece) was a study in innovation.

Joe Fonda will be back in May with the Michael Musillami Trio +2 and again next year with Marilyn Crispell’s Trio. We might have to wait longer for Fujii and Tamura to circle back. By that time, they will have played countless concerts, made many more recordings, and logged thousands of miles on multiple continents.

Uncharted: Fay Victor’s SoundNoiseFUNK

A fearless creativity lies at the center of Fay Victor’s artistic life. The vocalist, composer, and lyricist lays claim to an expansive sonic territory, which she explored with humility and self-assurance on Friday, January 24 at Hawks & Reed in Greenfield, as Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares’ 8th season rolled on.

Joined by guitarist Joe Morris and drummer Reggie Nicholson, Victor’s 90-minute set was a meditation on uncompromised, unencumbered improvising. “It’s been ages since I’ve played that long a set being so unaware of the time,” Victor told me the next day. “Felt some Zen moments last night for sure!”

Victor’s SoundNoiseFUNK visited the Valley after spending a couple of days at Dartmouth College, where Taylor Ho Bynum hosted. Soprano saxophonist Sam Newsome, a regular member of the ensemble, was unable to make these gigs. Thankfully, we had a chance to hear Newsome play a solo concert last month in Holyoke.

SoundNoiseFUNK has been a unit for a couple of years and the rapport shows. “Every night is completely different,” Morris said afterwards. But what I imagine doesn’t change is their real-time pursuit of communion, as well as their willingness to embrace the unknown. Without a chart in sight, the trio dove in, three independent minds feeling each other out, much like the early rounds of a party chat, poking around until you settle on a subject to delve into.

It wasn’t until half way through the program that Victor sung a lyric. Her wordless vocals, produced from all parts of her instrument, challenged our assumptions of what a “jazz singer” is. The way she abstracted sound and interacted with her bandmates allowed me to hear her, not as a singer with the band, but as another member of the band. At one point, I saw her left hand fingering an imaginary saxophone.

Her original lyrics were simple, but moving and out of the ordinary. Her piece about the state of the world and the destruction of our environment had the refrain, “No atmosphere, no air,” which she hissed and twisted in many directions. We are all Eric Garner, I thought to myself.

Her song, “Creative Folks!” was a joyous manifesto for life affirming action. “Keep creating/Creating is connection/The contact feels like love/Remembering what is true in all of us/We need each other/We are the last revolutionaries.” Victor repeated the words until they dissolved into pure sound.

Joe Morris and Victor have a special connection. Their interaction was alive, brisling with risk and have-your-back support. He is one of today’s most creative guitarists. At times, he used electronic effects to create dense washes of sound that Victor would parachute through. Other times they skittered hand in hand in abstract conversation. Morris has lived in New Haven and Boston for much of his life, and has produced hundreds of concerts and recordings over his 40-year career. He has educated generations of students at New England Conservatory, played guitar (and bass) at the highest levels, and enlivened the music scene wherever he has been. He is a New England treasure.

I was so glad to have my first in-person visit with Reggie Nicholson. I knew him through the spectacular recordings he made with Amina Claudine Myers and Henry Threadgill in the 1980s, and Ernest Dawkins and Myra Melford in the 1990s. Like fellow Chicago drummer Hamid Drake, Nicholson’s playing was relaxed, and constantly advanced the conversation; both smile a lot. He played at just the right volume, with just the right amount of groove and openness. Nicholson recently retired from a career teaching music at Evander Childs High School in the Bronx, where he lives. Hopefully he’ll be on the road more in the coming years, including western Massachusetts. I heard him tell someone he was mentored by one of my favorites: Hal Russell. I need to ask him about that.

The story goes that Fay Victor was a more conventional jazz singer in New York, struggling to gain her footing, when she decided to move to Amsterdam in 1996. Seven years later, after working with Misha Mengleberg, Wolter Wierbos and other European iconoclasts, she returned to New York with an expanded approach to singing. She calls it “freesong.” I have to ask her about that transformation, too.

The Singular Path of Sam Newsome

Before sounding a note, soprano saxophonist Sam Newsome told the 70 of us gathered at Holyoke’s Wistariahurst Museum about four epiphanies he’s had in his life. The first one, in middle school, was his realization that music would be central to his life. After establishing a career as a tenor saxophonist, his second epiphany was to forsake the tenor for a new instrument: the soprano saxophone. Then, after hearing a Steve Lacy solo album, Newsome dedicated himself to the art of playing alone. Finally, he committed to concentrating on the broadest manifestation of sound.

His preamble provided a helpful frame of reference for the beguiling, highly original 70 minutes of music that followed. The December 19th event was Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares’ fifth concert of the season.

Describing the evening by listing all the extraordinary treatments that Newsome employed to alter his soprano, would be to miss the significance, and impact, of his devotion to basic sound science. The concert was more than a succession of innovative techniques; each segment moved us, made us laugh, forced us to ponder assumptions and possibilities.

At two different points in the concert he hooked chimes, one metal, one wood, to his horn. With the chimes dangling, Newsome swayed and created a beautiful tapestry of sound that had a wind-blown randomness, coupled with conscious chromatic intent. During other segments, he attached coiled plastic tubing between his mouthpiece and the body of his instrument, deepening the sound and changing the resonance to resemble a bass clarinet.

He folded a tin pie plate over the bell of his horn after putting objects inside (dried beans? small marbles?) and shook it like a shekere. He produced flatulent, duck-like noises. He attached four balloons to his soprano, creating rubbed percussion. He leaned into the body of the grand piano onstage and blew, creating notes that decayed throughout the lovely Wistariahurst Music Room.

One could describe Newsome’s music as “other-worldly,” but then I had an epiphany of my own: these sounds are not from another world, they were produced by a human being standing right in front of me, using familiar objects. Perhaps it is the narrowness of our experience within the infinite sound world that cause us to characterize these sounds as foreign. Newsome’s commanding technique and fertile imagination elevated the music beyond novelty, to something profound.

Newsome had arranged his accoutrements on the small stage and played in front of it. The flat seating meant that those towards the back had difficulty seeing how he was doing what he was doing. I like to close my eyes when listening to music, but so much sounded so novel, that I, and many others, were craning our necks and shaking our heads throughout.

Newsome employed circular breathing and rapid fingering to produce what I swear was audio signal processing. Some of the most sublime moments occurred when Newsome played it “straight,” with no effects or extended techniques. He played, then deconstructed Ellington’s “In a Sentimental Mood,” and later Coltrane’s “Giant Steps,” allowing these iconic melodies to shine. At these moments we could fully appreciate Newsome’s virtuosity.

Newsome is an integral part of Darius Jones’ Shades of Black Quartet and Fay Victor’s SoundNoiseFUNK Quartet, but there are few musicians who have devoted such a large portion of their professional life to performing alone. Since 2006 Newsome has released seven solo soprano saxophone recordings. His latest is Chaos Theory: Song Cycles for Prepared Saxophone.

“I’ve always felt playing music must be about more than chasing opportunities to make money and being famous,” Newsome writes in the introduction to his book, Life Lessons from the Horn: Essays on Jazz, Originality and Being a Working Musician. “Since gaining the adulation of strangers has never been high among my desires and none of these different kinds of fame provide anything extra to our music, I’ve concluded that my creative production is in itself more important.”

We are inspired by, and thankful for this attitude. It is one of the most important criteria we use in programming Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares.