The Free Jazz Collective
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By Stef Gijssels
The fun thing about Natsuki Tamura and Satoko Fujii is their incredible versatility. Gentle mainstream jazz, folk jazz, orchestral jazz, intimate duets or jazz fusion, are just a few examples of their stylistic scope. Trumpet-player Natsuki Tamura dares to go a step further in his personal endeavours, as testified by this album with drummer Jim Black. On his previous album, "Summer Tree" (2022), all tracks were titled with the word 'summer' in them. Now the word is 'city': Morning City, Afternoon City, City of Dusk, City of Night, Quiet City, Noisy City, Calm City, Bright City.
The pieces are short, compact and all 'composed' around a core concept : a few lines, a theme, a mode of interaction. Some pieces are completely improvised. Black shows himself the perfect companion for Tamura's enthusiasm, his pleasure of creating, with a lot of space for heavy tribal drumming. It's an ode to music, to life, to vitality. It's intense, relentless, infectious and very special. I share one track, "Bright City", below which demonstrates their art: it's wonderfully direct, with Tamura singing some incomprehensible incantations, without any constraints, raw, simple in its concept yet surely hard to perform, full of boyish passion and fun. And listen to Black's drumming. Despite or precisely because of his mastery of the instrument, his drumming sounds so simple, so straightforward, so full of life energy and so exciting. In a way it's brutal, unsophisticated, without flourishes: a musical language stripped to its core.
Tamura and Black released their first album together already in 1999, "White & Blue", and as members of the Satoko Fujii Four, with "Live In Japan 2004" (2005), and "When We Were There" (2006). Black has also been a regular member of the Satoko Fujii Trio.
It's only after writing this review, that I actually took notice of the liner notes, written by Satoko Fuji. Here is an excerpt that is fully in line with my own response:
"This time, I figured nothing Tamura did would surprise me. After he completed the recording in Bern and I finished a gig in Nantes, we met up at a hotel in Paris, where I finally got to hear what he had recorded. Once again my jaw dropped. For one thing, he and Jim are in incredible form. They sound like whirling dervishes, playing with a vigor that utterly belies their ages (Tamura is 72 and Jim is 56). The tracks overflow with the sheer joy of music-making, and they let that energy take them where it will. As a musician I'm awed by their ability to unleash a performance like this, at their age, especially in the midst of jet lag after flying for hours in economy class. "
The great thing is that both men have maintained their youthful enthusiasm and energetic joy for free music.
Whatever your age, this is guaranteed to keep you young, this is guaranteed to make you happy.
Listen and download from Bandcamp.