Satoko Fujii

Emerging as one of the more striking presences in avant-garde jazz during the 1990s, Japanese-born pianist Satoko Fujii displayed command of dissonant free improvisation after Cecil Taylor, reflective solo pieces shaped by Japanese folk and classical sources, and intricate big-band writing that ignited collective fire. She began piano lessons at age four and continued classical study for sixteen years, only to recognize that the training had nearly erased her instinct for improvisation; this realization prompted a year-long hiatus before she turned to jazz lessons with Koji Taku and Fumio Itabashi. A 1985 scholarship brought her to the Berklee School of Music, where she completed the program in two years, then worked the leading jazz clubs across Japan while sustaining herself as a session player and instructor. She came back to the United States in 1993 to enroll at the New England Conservatory of Music, studying with George Russell, Cecil McBee, and Paul Bley. Her first American recording, the 1995 album Something About Water, paired her with Bley; the next release, Indication, was wholly solo and at moments suggested Keith Jarrett, both projects earning strong critical notice. In 1997 she issued the duet album How Many? with her husband, trumpeter Natsuki Tamura; the following year her fifteen-piece orchestra made its debut on the Leo album South Wind, again drawing warm praise, and she also recorded the trio set Looking Out the Window. The year 1999 yielded the intimate, graceful Kitsune-Bi and the experimental Past Life, the latter made with her Japanese sextet. Output continued to increase, with three albums appearing in 2000—Jo by the fifteen-piece ensemble, the two-disc Double Take featuring both large groups, and the trio date Toward “To West”—and three more in 2001: April Shower, a duo with violinist Mark Feldman; Junction by the trio; and Vulcan with a rock-inflected Japanese quartet.