PORTLAND — Pianists Satoko Fujii and bassist Joe Fonda are returning to Maine to perform two concerts. The duo will present the first at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 7, at The Dance Hall in Kittery and the second at 8 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 8, at Portland Conservatory of Music Dimensions in Jazz Series at Woodfords Congregational Church in Portland. The Saturday concert will be preceded by a workshop from 4 to 5 p.m.

Fujii and Fonda’s debut release in 2016, Duet, was recorded as part of the Dimensions in Jazz Series. The album landed on several best-of-the-year lists and received four stars from DownBeat Magazine. Karl Ackermann of All About Jazz called it “a masterful outing where Fujii and Fonda work with empathy and inspiration. The music is by turns reflective and intense … always focused and often striking in its complex beauty.”

They followed that up with the 2018 release of Mizu, which also landed on several best-of-the-year lists and was praised as “superb and perfectly balanced” by Bruce Gallanter of New York’s Downtown Music Gallery.

The duo’s artistic collaboration began when, at the urging of a festival producer in Europe, Fonda contacted Fujii in 2015 to see if she’d like to get together to play. They eventually were able to coordinate their busy international performing schedules for a New England tour later in the year. They managed two other concerts and their debut live album before their next opportunity to play together for an extended period emerged, on a 2017 four-city European tour. Mizu was recorded on that tour.

Despite a lengthy gap between performances, the chemistry between Fujii and Fonda only grows stronger. “We talk to each other in music,” says Fujii. Fonda agrees. “Now that we’ve had a chance to play together more, the vocabulary and the possibilities that we’re using have expanded,” he says. “We trust and respect each other, that’s where the freedom comes from.”

The freedom results in exhilarating music that is both inviting and challenging. “I would not get the same inspiration from Joe if he played only like an accompanist,” Fujii says. “For me instrumentation and traditional soloist-accompanist roles are not that important. Who I play with and the quality of their ideas and willingness to work together are far more important to me.”

“I feel free to play whatever I want and so does she,” Fonda says.

Joe Fonda “is a serious seeker of new musical horizons,” according to the Boston Phoenix. From 1984 to 1999, he was the bassist with composer-improviser and NEA Jazz Master Anthony Braxton. Fonda also has been an integral member of several cooperative bands, including the Fonda-Stevens Group with Michael Jefry Stevens, Herb Robertson and Harvey Sorgen; Conference Call, with Gebhard Ullmann, Stevens and George Schuller; the Fab Trio with Barry Altschul and Billy Bang; and the Nu Band with Mark Whitecage, Roy Campbell and Lou Grassi. He is a member of 3dom Factor, Altschul’s trio with saxophonist Jon Irabagon, and guitarist Michael Musillami’s trio, among others. He has collaborated and performed with other artists such as Archie Shepp, Ken McIntyre, Lou Donaldson, Bill and Kenny Barron, Wadada Leo Smith, Randy Weston, and Carla Bley. He has led some unique ensembles of his own, including From the Source, which features four instrumentalists, a tap dancer, and a body healer/vocalist; and Bottoms Out, a sextet with Gerry Hemingway, Joe Daley, Michael Rabinowitz, Claire Daly, and Ullmann. He has released 12 recordings under his own name.

Critics and fans alike hail pianist and composer Satoko Fujii as one of the most original voices in jazz today. In concert and on nearly 100 albums as a leader or co-leader, the globetrotting Japanese native synthesizes jazz, contemporary classical, avant-rock, and Japanese folk music into an innovative music instantly recognizable as hers alone. Since she burst onto the scene in 1996, Fujii has led some of the most consistently creative ensembles in modern improvised music. In 2013, she debuted the Satoko Fujii New Trio featuring bassist Todd Nicholson and drummer Takashi Itani. The trio expanded into a quartet called Tobira with the addition of her husband, trumpeter Natsuki Tamura, in 2014. Her acoustic quartet the Min-Yoh Ensemble with trumpeter Tamura, trombonist Curtis Hasselbring, and accordionist Andrea Parkins is dedicated to developing written and improvised music in the collective spirit of Japanese folkloric music. Fujii has established herself as one of the world’s leading composers for large jazz ensembles, prompting Cadence magazine to call her “the Ellington of free jazz.” Since 1996, she has released a steady stream of acclaimed albums for jazz orchestras and in 2006 she simultaneously released four big band albums: one from her New York ensemble, and one each by three different Japanese bands.  In 2013 she debuted the Satoko Fujii Orchestra Chicago at the Chicago Jazz Festival. In 2015, she released a CD by her new Satoko Fujii Orchestra Berlin and worked with orchestras in Oakland, California and Bielefeld, Germany. In addition to playing accordion in Tamura’s Gato Libre, Fujii also performs in a duo with Tamura, as an unaccompanied soloist, with the international quartet Kaze, and in ad hoc groupings with musicians working in different genres. During her 60th birthday year in 2018, a milestone known as Kanreki in Japan, Fujii celebrated by releasing one new CD a month.

The Dance Hall is at 7 Walker St., Kittery. Tickets are $20, $16 advance. For information, call 207-703-2083 or visit https://www.thedancehallkittery.org/events-list/https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/4491822. Woodfords Congregational Church is at 202 Woodfords St., Portland. Tickets are $20, $15 advance, $10 seniors, $5 students. For information, call 207-828-1310 or visit https://www.eventbrite.com/e/pianist-satoko-fujii-bassist-joe-fonda-dimensions-in-jazz-tickets-85029953881.

 

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