Satoko Fujii's Tokyo Trio Comes to Goshen

Although she is humble, soft spoken and stands barely over 5 feet, it’s easy to be impressed with pianist Satoko Fujii. Over her recording career, which began in 1996 with a two-piano effort with Paul Bley, she has produced over 100 recordings  as a leader. She regularly crisscrosses oceans, performing constantly  in Japan, Europe and North America where her fiercely creative work in settings from solo to big band has been uniformly celebrated by critics and audiences.

On March 31, Fujii made quite the impression on 55 listeners at the Institute For the Musical Arts in Goshen, MA, as she led her Tokyo Trio in an engrossing recital of brand new originals. This concert, part of the Trio’s first North American tour, included stops in Minneapolis, Chicago, Boston, New York, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver. The band, featuring Takashi Sugawa on bass and Ittetsu Takemura on drums, has been together for seven years and has three recordings to date, including Dream a Dream, which came out last week. But rather than highlighting music from the new disc, (they played only one piece, “Aruku”), Fujii chose to concentrate on even newer music they’ll record next week in New York. Such is life for the forward thinking, boundlessly energetic 66 year old pianist.

Monday’s concert covered considerable territory, all of it rugged, untamed and breath taking. Delicate moments of calm repose, eerie sounds from inside the piano, and volcanic eruptions of cacophonous energy filled the barn (and those of us in it), with a sense of wonder at the Trio’s virtuosity and spirit of collaboration.

Sections of compositional material featured expectation-defying, pointillistic tutti bursts that crackled and popped.  We moved to the edge of our seats wondering if they could keep the angles together. They nailed endings with the precision of an Olympic gymnast. Other times the threesome floated in a loose configuration that begged the question: written or improvised? They tossed around the spotlight, allowing everybody ample time for unaccompanied soloing. Most of the evening was spent with the musicians in deep, improvised conversation, providing accents, color and commentary. Their confidence in themselves and each other meant we could sit back and marvel at their ease of execution, which translated into what every band aspires to: a true simpatico.

Sugawa and Takemura are more than a generation younger than Fujii. They were clearly thrilled to be sharing the bandstand with her. But she told us how lucky she felt to be playing with them. They are in demand sidemen in Japan.

Takashi Sugawa, 45, is a member of bands led by Terumasa Hino and Sadao Watanabe. Hino, the 82 year old trumpeter, and Watanabe, the 92 year old saxophonist, are among the most celebrated jazz musicians in Japan. Educated at Berklee and mentored by Masabumi Kikuchi, Sugawa lives in Tokyo where he leads his Banksia Trio. His technique, both pizzicato and with bow, was impeccable, and at times produced sounds that resembled a human voice or an electronic instrument. Saxophonist Jason Robinson, who recently returned from a tour of Japan, mentioned how most bass players he encountered had the same long hair as Sugawa. What does that mean?

Born in Sapporo in 1989, Ittetsu Takemura has been a professional musician since he graduated junior high school. Like Sugawa, he is also a veteran of Sadao Watanabe’s band, as well as a member of ensembles led by Kosuke Mine and Fumio Itabashi. Wearing a suit, polo shirt and sneakers without socks, Takemura cut a cool figure. His precise and expansive drumming was equally striking. He played with great dynamic range while never overplaying. Like his rhythm mate, he was intimate with the material and it showed in the execution.

Utilizing the entire keyboard (inside and out), Fujii’s playing was magnificent. She used an e-bow, typically used to vibrate guitar strings, to create synth-like sounds, and used what looked like fishing line to “floss” the strings. She used her forearms on the keys to create density, and played repeated high notes with bell-like effect. She led the band with a light touch, using eye contact and slight head nods to move the music along. In explaining how the music was put together to IMA co-founder June Millington, Sugawa showed her the sheet music. Following Fujii’s lead, they could play the complicated piece through as written, or start at any of its four sections, improvising all the way. For Millington, it was a very different way of organizing music.

I first met Satoko Fujii in 2012, when she performed solo as part of A World of Piano, and then in a memorable Solos & Duos Series concert featuring two couples (Fujii/Natsuki Tamura and Carla Kihlstedt/Matthias Bossi) in a series of four duos. Fujii performed a Jazz Shares concert in Northampton with Joe Fonda in February, 2020, and Priscilla Page and I were witness to the recording of her 100th album,  Hyaku, One Hundred Dreams, at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music in New York in 2022. Fujii is an unassuming master, largely unknown among U.S. audiences, but revered by those in the know. She is the right kind of restless and I’m grateful to be in her orbit.