The Continuing Adventures of Natsuki Tamura and Satoko Fujii

By Eyal Hareuveni

Keiji Haino / Natsuki Tamura - What happened there? (Libra, 2025)

Japanese trumpeter Natsuki Tamura was born in 1951, a year before fellow Japanese, iconic guitarist Keiji Haino. Both Tamura and Haino are known as free spirits with strong-minded, experimental approaches, unrestrained by convention and embracing psychedelic and avant-rock, free jazz, and free improvisation to a point that blurs any genre distinctions. They also share a deep interest in folk music from all over the world and are known for their eccentric, often provocative performances.

But despite their rich careers and extensive, collaborative works, they did not play together until Tamura and his partner, pianist Satoko Fujii, invited Haino to their annual, daylong marathon festival at Tokyo’s legendary Shinjuku Pit-Inn club in January 2024. Tamura and Haino did not talk much before beginning to play the free improvised set.

Haino, with only his electric guitar and vocals, and Tamura, on trumpet, vocals, and kitchen utensil percussion, enjoy this adventurous-surprising meeting, with its reckless energy, absurdist humor, and profound, lyrical beauty. There is no telling what these gifted improvisers will do next, but they listen carefully to each other, and they are wise enough to color or subvert each other’s ideas in unpredictable, poetic gestures, without seeking explosive, cathartic climaxes, but a compassionate, conversational union of magical sounds. They clearly enjoy the intense, often openly emotional dialog of contrasts, and the opportunity to explore unusual timbres and textures within the risk-taking, free-associative flow of ideas. Brilliant.

Satoko Fujii GEN - Altitude 1100 Meters (Libra, 2025)

Pianist-composer Satoko Fujii's first suite for a six-musician string ensemble GEN (弦 - gen - means string in Japanese) celebrates her 65th birthday and fulfills her dream to play with such an ensemble. Fujii, a lifelong city dweller, composed the five-movement suite in the summer of 2023 while vacationing with her aging parents in the highlands of Nagano, on the western side of Japan’s main island, Honshu, at an altitude of 1,100 meters, enchanted by the mountain views and the cool breezes, away from the city heat.

Fujii was inspired by the unique, ethereal atmosphere of the Nagano mountains and wanted to mirror the unique atmosphere and the ever-changing landscapes of the day into the delicate, vibrating sonorities of string instruments, and her prepared piano, that can bend notes and play microtones. She composed this suite on a small electric piano., and says that the sound of the string instruments “activates a part of my brain in a way that’s totally different from other instruments”.

Each movement uses distinct sonorities of the two violinists, the violist (who also contributes electronic colorings) and the double bass player, who often employ extended bowing techniques, to create haunting, evocative nuances and contrasts and propel the dramatic flow of the suite. The music unfolds patiently and skillfully employs the strings spectrum of the ensemble. It is mostly introspective and leaves enough space for individual and collective improvisations and the commanding individual voices of the ensemble. This was done so masterfully when the only musician in the ensemble, except Fujii, who had played with her before is the drummer Akira Horikoshi, who had played with Fujii in her Orchestra Tokyo and Fujii’s ma-do quartet.