Satoko Fujii’s Orchestra Berlin bursts with energy and excitement
on their second recording, Ninety-Nine Years
“Satoko Fujii is the Ellington of free jazz.” – Cadence Magazine
“Satoko Fujii is a brilliant and inspiring jazz genius. There is just no other way to say it.”
– Travis Rogers Jr., The Jazz Owl
Fujii convened Orchestra Berlin in 2015 to record Ichigo Ichie, a commission from the Chicago Jazz Festival, written for and originally performed by a ten-piece ensemble of Chicago musicians. Fujii, who was living in Berlin at the time, wanted to record the piece, so she asked German saxophonist Gebhard Ullmann, for whom she’d written arrangements heard on his 2004 Soul Note CD, Big Band Project, to put together a group to record her new composition. She had never heard or played with most of them. “I really didn’t know how they would play together or how the music would sound,” Fujii says. “I didn't expect them to play so hot, with so much energy.”
Although composer-conductor and orchestra hadn’t worked together before, they clicked immediately. In his 4-star review of the album in All About Jazz, Budd Kopman wrote, “This is edge-of-the-seat music that has a palpable central line of energy flowing through it… frequently astonishing in its impact...”
“Their sound made me want to write this project,” Fujii says. “I probably wouldn’t have written these pieces if I hadn’t done Ichigo Ichie with them.”
The album opens with “Unexpected Incident” (the Japanese government’s euphemism for the Fukushima nuclear disaster), a showcase for the band in all its bold, energized glory. The composition features the steamrolling power of the band’s tenor saxophonists, with Ullmann plowing ahead over the ensemble early in the piece, Matthias Schubert locked in a fierce duet with trombonist Matthias Müller, and concludes with Ullman’s growling, raving unaccompanied solo.
In an unaccompanied solo, bassist Jan Roder opens “Ninety-Nine Years,” a dedication to Fujii’s late mother-in-law, with his strong sense of line and development. Drummers Peter Orins and Michael Griener and baritone saxophonist Paulina Owczarek enter one by one, building to an ebbing and flowing collective improvisation. Then Ullmann once again powers up, launching long flexing lines that erupt into contoured waves of pure sound. Fujii cues in an affecting, melancholy melody from the ensemble, contrasting sorrow and compassion with Ullmann’s unquenchable vitality.
The percussionists display their close rapport and command of rhythm, groove, and texture in duets at the beginning of “On the Way,” before trumpeter Natsuki Tamura lightens the mood with a hilarious solo utilizing vocal sounds and odd-ball mutterings.
Tamura suggested the title of “Oops,” whose tricky rhythms initially gave the horn players problems. Schubert once again brings excitement and grandeur to the proceeding in his wild, almost operatic solo. “Follow the Idea” brings the album to a close with another burst of white hot energy and wild swings between dead serious intensity and high-spirited humor.
Fujii’s unprecedented birthday bash continues in April with Bright Force (Libra) by Kira Kira, a quartet featuring Australian pianist Alister Spence, trumpeter Natsuki Tamura, and drummer Ittetsu Takemura. Intelsat, a duet with Spence will follow later in the year. May will see the release of Triad (Long Song Records), which showcases a one-time trio with Italian soprano saxophonist Gianni Mimmo and American bassist Joe Fonda. The summer months start to heat up in June with 1538 by This Is It!, a trio featuring Fujii with Tamura on trumpet and Takashi Itani on percussion. Fujii and bassist Fonda follow up their acclaimed 2016 duo album with a new one in July. Later in the year, a new recording by Orchestra Tokyo and the debut of a new piano-bass-drums trio will arrive. Other surprises and delights will be in store over the course of the year, in what is sure to be an unforgettable outpouring of musical riches.
Critics and fans alike hail pianist and composer Satoko Fujii as one of the most original voices in jazz today. She’s “a virtuoso piano improviser, an original composer and a bandleader who gets the best collaborators to deliver," says John Fordham in The Guardian. In concert and on more than 80 albums as a leader or co-leader, she synthesizes jazz, contemporary classical, avant-rock, and Japanese folk music into an innovative music instantly recognizable as hers alone. Over the years, Fujii has led some of the most consistently creative ensembles in modern improvised music, including her trio with bassist Mark Dresser and drummer Jim Black, the Min-Yoh Ensemble, and an electrifying avant-rock quartet featuring drummer Tatsuya Yoshida of The Ruins. Her ongoing duet project with husband Natsuki Tamura released their sixth recording, Kisaragi, in 2017.
“The duo's commitment to producing new sounds based on fresh ideas is second only to their musicianship,” says Karl Ackermann in All About Jazz. Aspiration, a CD by an ad hoc band featuring Wadada Leo Smith, Tamura, and Ikue Mori, was released in 2017 to wide acclaim. “Four musicians who regularly aspire for greater heights with each venture reach the summit together on Aspiration,” writes S. Victor Aaron in Something Else. She records infrequently as an unaccompanied soloist, but Solo (Libra), the first of her projected 12 birthday-year albums, led Dan McClenaghan to enthuse in All About Jazz, that the album “more so than her other solo affairs—or any of her numerous ensembles for that matter—deals in beauty, delicacy of touch, graceful melodicism.” As the leader of no less than five orchestras in the U.S., Germany, and Japan, Fujii has also established herself as one of the world’s leading composers for large jazz ensembles, leading Cadence magazine to call her, “the Ellington of free jazz.”
