(Reprinted from the February 2022 issue of Downbeat magazine)

When pianist/composer Satoko Fujii came to the U.S. from Japan to study at Berklee College of Music in the mid-1980s, she found herself surrounded by American students who’d cut their teeth on blues-based music. Though fully adept in the musical languages she’d learned in Japan—jazz, classical, Japanese folk—the blues escaped her.  

“For me, the blue note is flat three, flat five or flat seven,” she said in a Zoom chat from Tokyo. “I had that knowledge, but I couldn't get the feeling of the blues. I had to learn it.”

Learning the blues wasn’t easy, Fujii admits, but from her study in the U.S. she did take away some pivotal insights: Musical ideas come from everywhere. And artistry lies in the inventiveness with which the composer fuses her ideas together.

“The blues is a kind of fusion music, like jazz is,” she said. “My music is jazz, even if some people don’t think so. I make my music from the many things that I have heard so far.”

She went on to recall her first big band album in the States, South Wind (Leo Lab), in 1997. For this record, she built her original compositions around the Okinawan version of the pentatonic scale, with its subtly enticing flat five. Accustomed to the pentatonic scale of European classical music, the American musicians in her band had trouble finding the right feel for her pieces.

“I grew up hearing Okinawa music, so I already knew how to use it,” she said. “But I saw extraordinary American musicians struggling with that scale. And I remembered how it was for me to study the blues. The blues were totally different from what was in my blood.”

Last year, the isolation of the pandemic gave Fujii another opportunity to test her mettle as a syncretic composer. Frustrated with the lack of performance opportunities, she began to record freely improvised music at a distance, learning new technologies that required modifications to the way she usually plays. In November, she released two remotely recorded albums on Libra Records, her imprint with trumpeter (and husband) Natsuki Tamura.

To lay down the five tracks for Mosaic, with her trio This Is It!, Fujii and Tamura squeezed into a small, sound-proofed practice room in their home. The group’s drummer, Takashi Itani, lived 400 miles away, however, so they had decided to record via the internet, wearing headphones. The trio would have to synchronize without any kinesthetic or visual input—a potentially disruptive set-up for the deeply intuitive improvisatory compositions that Fujii is known for.

But if Fujii and her band lost some of their spontaneity to this process, you can’t tell by listening. Take, for example, the album’s first track, “Habana Dream,” with its eddies of Cuban syncopation. Or the crisply punctuated phrases that offset the open spells of “Kumazemi.” And the disjointed, polyrhythmic harmonies of “Sleepless Night.”

On her second 2020 album, Underground—a vehicle for her duo Futari, with vibraphonist Taiko Saito—Fujii employed a different tack.  She and Saito, who lives in Berlin, each recorded in isolation, handling the tech themselves. They then swapped audio files, experimenting and adjusting until reaching agreement on the best interpretation of each composition.

This approach also worked: Throughout the album, the two players seem of one mind, from the metallic turbulence of the title cut, through the eerie, fluttering runs on “Frost Stirring,” to the dogged drone and screeching vocal improvisations of “One Note Techno Punks,” the final cut. It’s easy to forget that a continent lies between them.    

“So many musicians think music should be made in the same room, and some musicians think remotely making music is wrong,” Fujii observed. “But I like doing everything. I need freedom, especially in making music.”

Photo: Bryan Murray