Futari
Futari
Satoko Fujii : piano
Taiko Saito : vibraphone
Released November19,2021 via Libra Record
Press Release
A Magical, Mysterious Masterpiece by Satoko Fujii and Taiko Saito
Pianist Satoko Fujii has made more good albums than just about anyone alive. ..Her latest album, Beyond is one of her most rivetingly evocative and marks the debut of yet another new project, Futari, a duo with vibraphonist Taiko Saito…
The two return to ambience punctuated by bell-like accents to close the record on a vast, meditative note with Spectrum. Saito’s strengths as a listener and an elegant orchestrator deserve a bandmate as focused as Fujii, whose extemporaneous tunesmithing gets pushed to new levels here. It’s awfully early in the year to be speculating about the best album of 2021, but there’s nothing that’s been released so far that can touch the sheer magic of this one.
Satoko Fujii has found a new sound. The prolific and always adventurous pianist-composer teams with vibraphonist Taiko Saito—tagging their duo Futari—for a beautifully surreal journey called Beyond……
Fujii’s discography is vast. The sounds she makes range from the thunderously aggressive to the “way far out there” and abstract, to the pensively, delicately ruminatively lovely. Beyond leans to the last side of those descriptions. It is a quiet, inward, often otherworldly listening experience. The use of extended techniques on the parts of both artistsresult in a sound that might not be readily identified in places, on a blind listen, as “piano and vibraphone.“
Dan McClenaghan, All About Jazz
this album stood out in the immense stream of releases in recent months. Both musicians transform the sound possibilities of their instruments beyond the expectable and project their interplay into manifest metaphysical realms of imagination that they give shape and let bloom with extraordinary poetical temperament, inner calmness, (mutual) trust and self-evident certainty. It touches the breathing of the world behind the everyday noise and permeates it at the same time. Their music making unleashes dialectics of solid ground and higher force.
Henning Bolte, Europe Jazz Network
The uncommon instrumentation allows these two fearless explorers of new sounds to share much lyrical intensity. Together, they devote much of their improvising on Beyond to shaping poignant melodic phrases and abstract sounds into haunting, atmospheric performances.
Beyond (Libra Records) is Fujii’s first ever one-on-one with a vibraphone….
“On The Road” is the first track where Saito reminds me of another vibes player at all, where there are echoes of Gary Burton. But Burton & Corea never sounded as free as these two do even on this song, and the chemistry between this pair getting together to record in the middle of their first-ever tour together is already comparable to that of the older masters.
The piano/vibraphones duo isn’t exactly a new concept, but Satoko Fujii and Taiko Saito take that concept to places it’s never been before. The exotic places they visit make Beyond a trip well worth taking.
S.Victor Aaron, Somthing Else!
this disc doesn’t sound quite like anything she has done before. An extra special one-time treasure. – Bruce Lee Gallanter, DMG
The compositions on Beyond are quiet and often disappear into the silence between notes. Prepared piano and bowed vibraphone keys are employed to produce the soundscapes.
David Luhrssen, Shepherd Express
This Futari may be two persons, but it is also one mind.
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