JAZZ
Fujin Raijin
Fujin Raijin
Satoko Fujii and the Min-Yoh Ensemble issue an exploration of Japanese folk music to audiences far and wide with the release of their album, Fujin Raijin. Along with her husband, trumpeter Natsuki Tamura, piano-playing Fujii leads the diverse ensemble within a jazz framework. Artist: Satoko Fujii / Min-Yoh Ensemble
Album: Fujin Raijin
Rating: 2.5 stars by Bill Meyer If one word sums up the career of the husband and wife team of trumpeter Natsuki Tamura and pianist Satoko Fujii. it's breadth. This is true both literally-the 50-odd records they've made since 1996, mostly in each other's company, could fill a broad shelf-and stylistically. Both players shuttle easily between distant poles of conventionally prescribed and extended techniques; they've worked with musicians as disparate as jazz bassist Mark Dresser and prog-punk drummer Tatsuya Yoshida. In intimate settings and large groups, Fujii initially broke from a classical career track to play jazz, but within a jazz framework she has explored other musics; this group mines traditional Japanese melodies.

Min-yoh is a form of Japanese folk music originally performed a cappella to accompany physical labor. It evolved timing the 20th century into something much more specialized and virtuosic. In either form it represents Japan's rural past. Ironically, the ensemble's realization of Fujii's four min-yoh-inspired melodies and the traditional tunes that book-end them feels more Iberian than Japanese. The combination of plaintive brass themes, such as Tamura's marvelously lyrical opening solo on "Karihoslii Kiriuta." and the thumping piano at other points made me think of Charlie Haden and Carla Bley's adaptations of Spanish and Latin American themes in the Liberation Music Orchestra. Andrea Parkins, on the other hand, offers more extraterrestrial reference points; her accordion's electronically enhanced belches and wheezes on "Shimanto" sound like they bounced off a satellite on the way in from some unknown star. Trombonist Curtis Hasselbring brings an air of dignified tragedy to the same tune, which Fujii picks up and amplifies with bold elaborations on the theme. On "Slowly And Slowly," however, her playing is laborious, as though her devotion to the material short-circuited her improvisational instincts. Such lapses make this record more intriguing than satisfying.

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