Satoko Fujii: composing beyond the jazz spirit

(This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.)

LP: Thank you for doing this. I very much appreciate it.

Satoko Fujii: Thank you so much for your interest in interviewing me.

LP: I have spent quite a bit over the last few days with Jet Black and Unwritten. So, I feel like I'm immersed in the world of your music. It's such a distinct palette.

As I reflected on how it was landing for me, I realized there's the power of the music itself. There's also something very powerful in the production, the way you record, and everything's so distinct yet mixed so well. It seems to be part of a larger aesthetic. How do you approach the engineering and technical part of your music-making?

It seems to be so important.

Satoko Fujii: Your words will make my engineer very happy. Yeah, it's amazing because they both recorded in concerts, not in the recording studio. So, that means I didn't spend so much money. But there are several things with being in a recording studio, good and bad. And in front of an audience, we can keep our energy.

We know that we cannot have another take. That's it. We can get high energy and concentrate. That's a good thing with live recording. But of course, technically, it isn't easy. Because we are not in isolated rooms, so all sounds leak. It's difficult. If I make a mistake, it affects other bandmates, but I'm lucky because they know how to fix it.

If I make a mistake, they know how to fix it and make it right in the context. It's one of the secrets that makes the thing good. And technology now, we just need a computer, an audio interface, some mics at a concert venue, and a good engineer, of course. A professional sound engineer recorded Jet Black, but Peter Orins, a drummer in the band, recorded Unwritten. He knows the music and has a lot of experience, and we trust him, so everything went very well.

But I always get Mike Marciano, a sound engineer with a lot of success. He's in New York City, and I made many CDs with him. He used to work for Systems 2, the studio in New York City.

Now, he's more like a freelancer. He's just like a magician. Sometimes I'm unsure if it's good enough quality to make a CD. I just send the sound file to him, and he makes everything. Sometimes, it's completely different. Sometimes I feel like, wow, this sounds like we played in a beautiful, big music hall, but that's just underground, a very small venue, not good piano.

LP: It's amazing. Isn't that amazing? Yeah, that's such a gift and a skill.

Satoko Fujii: Yeah.

LP: When I started the conversation by saying I felt as though I was immersed in your music, the other side of that is I would have to spend months to become fully immersed in the catalog. It seems like it's hard not to acknowledge that with you about the volume and the prolific nature of your work.

What is your experience with your work? Because as a listener and as an observer, there could be an interpretation where it's almost an obsession to create. Is it a burden for you? Is it a joy for you? Like, how do you end up creating so much?

Satoko Fujii: I feel bad because I like doing that. Sometimes, I get complaints from many fans that they cannot follow. (laughter)

Yeah, but I just cannot stop because I love doing that. I don't feel like I'm working too much. I just follow my dream. Sometimes, I just would like to do something. Okay, just do it. That's it. No secret. I think I have a big appetite.

LP: How conceptual is your work? Do you embark on a project knowing you're writing a songbook for a specific ensemble? Or are you creating, and then in retrospect, you say, okay, this is going to be, I'm going to use this for the trio and a larger ensemble. How do you approach a project?

Satoko Fujii: Well, that depends.

Sometimes, I have a project coming up and would like to add one more piece. In that case, I make some pieces for that project. But other times, I compose every day in front of the piano. So, in that case, I just compose. Sometimes, I get inspired that this will be a great piece for a piano solo, orchestra, or whatever.

Many times, I just pick notes. I just compose. So I have a book I call Diary. Because I do compose every day, when I need a piece for a project, sometimes I just read it again, read it over again. And I play it, and I get some inspiration. Okay, this will be good for this project or another project.

Yeah. So it depends.

LP: Do you repeat yourself as an artist who creates so much and a composer who composes so much? And how do you avoid repeating yourself? Can you redo you have a facility with your entire catalog? Because you make so much different music. Like, how do you keep it all?

(laughter)

Satoko Fujii: You know what?

I am glad that you didn't notice. (laughter) Because my compositions sometimes sound very similar. Once I hear a Wayne Shorter composition, I would know, okay, this might be Wayne Shorter. So everybody has a certain way of approaching things, like intervals or rhythm.

LP: Favorite combinations or… yeah.

Satoko Fujii: I think I have that stuff.

There is an interesting story. Yesterday, my husband, Natsuki, was practicing trumpet in another room. And I was in front of the piano. I didn't hear what he was practicing. And I was composing. I made some lines and composed some notes, like a melody. I left the piano room and heard my husband playing what I composed right before. How does he know?

LP: That's beautiful. That's beautiful.

Satoko Fujii: No, that was another piece of mine. (laughter)

LP: So I thought you had some kind of bond across space and time, and it was just something you had previously written.

Satoko Fujii: It's not the same, but I can tell. How come he knows this line? But I sometimes repeat myself—the same licks. We cannot avoid it. We, people, have such a tendency, that's probably not a bad thing, so people can tell, you know, this is their piece.

LP: It also almost creates a thread through time. Like, I don't think of it as a bad thing at all. It ties a canon together in a way.

Satoko Fujii: Miles Davis, I think his playing is pretty much the same, even if he changed with an electric instrument or before, like the 50s, he played with an acoustic instrument, then he changed to another instrumentation.

But if we hear what he was playing, that's pretty much similar. I think it sounded so different because of a different context and group. That's not a bad thing. I would like to think like that. (laughter)

LP: I'm curious about your background: your classical training and education for so much of your early life. When I speak with other improvising or creative music artists, they often talk about the difficulty of transitioning. Either because they had teachers who did not want them to improvise or because they had never developed those skills.

And I wonder what the transition was like for you?

Satoko Fujii: It was very difficult. Some people can get very easily from classical to more improvisation because I remember when I was very little before I got classical training, I improvised with piano. In front of the piano, I was three or four years old and just playing.

I just hit the keyboard, and I enjoyed it. Sometimes, I get some illusions while playing the piano and some movie films in my brain. I had a great time doing that. Then, I started studying classical music, such as the classical piano. I needed to read music, which, of course, is not fun for kids. It's difficult. We have to be very patient.

Then, I was a teenager because one of my classical piano teachers loved jazz. I was curious about jazz, so I started listening to it on FM radio. I never liked jazz. Until I listened to John Coltrane, yeah, A Love Supreme. I was so shocked because the music I heard didn't understand anything.

That was just like noise, so much density, but I was moved with something. I was very curious, so I tried improvising with the piano. And I didn't notice; I couldn't play anything if I didn't have a music score. I was shocked because I felt like a well-trained dog that can do anything if they are told but cannot do anything if they are not.

LP: Yeah.

Satoko Fujii: I was so sad. I quit classical piano right away. And, uh, I tried, but no success. With piano, I just needed something in front of me. So I decided just to leave the piano. So I did. And I connected with some people who are interested in, like, improvising with their voice and just, you know, hitting somewhere.

So it's crazy stuff—improvising music without musical instruments. I just wanted to see what I can do with it. And I got all crazy people.

LP: Hippies. (laughter)

Satoko Fujii: Yes. And every week, I do. At the park, we just did real spontaneous improvising with voice. That was crazy stuff. People like family in the park and walking away (laughter), but that was so much fun.

But once I did that, I returned to the piano with no success. I was away from the piano for, I think, more than two years doing that kind of stuff. Still, I loved jazz, so I listened to jazz radio back then vinyl and went to jazz clubs in Tokyo. And I found my favorite jazz piano player, Fumio Itabashi. He used to play like Elvin Jones's band.

I asked him if I could study with him. And I started taking lessons, his lessons. He also switched from classical music to jazz. But he didn't have any hard time with the transition. So he didn't understand why I couldn't play. Because I have some skills, I mean, because of classical piano training, but I don't know what I can do.

He just says, play, that's it. But that didn't work. And because through classical piano training, I could read music, I started playing professionally in some cabaret in Tokyo, because I could read music. Everybody said to me, you would be great. We just stayed there for one year, because we played every night.

Everybody could improve. So don't worry, just stay there. But that didn't happen to me. Wow. Yeah. I was still very bad. I think I was the worst professional piano player in Tokyo back then. (laughter)

LP: I don't believe you.

Satoko Fujii: I have confidence. Anyway, I decided to go to the States to study at Berklee because I thought maybe studying in the school for my case was a good idea.

So I did. And I practiced, practiced, practiced in the school every day, spending like two and a half years. Finally, I could play jazz, improvisation, or ad-lib with chord progression. Finally, I could get it, but not the end. This is not the end. Then, I moved back to Japan and started having a professional career.

I just lost my goal. I couldn't remember why I wanted to play jazz, why I wanted to play piano, why I wanted to make music. I wanted to see what I wanted to do or what I wanted to do. Again, I would move to the States to study at Harvard. And you see, New England Conservatory. And I met Paul Bley and all these great teachers, Joe Maneri, George Russell, even Jimmy Giuffre is there.

And finally, I noticed in narrow meaning it's not my music. I have something else inside that may be jazz, but that may not be jazz. I realized I had something. It's not just playing like Herbie Hancock or playing like Wynton Kelly. I finally raised myself.

LP: Are there piano players outside of jazz that influence you more, or do different genres influence you differently? I ask you that question because, in reading interviews with you, it seems like you've evolved around accepting the term jazz for what you do.

And listening to your music, I understand that. No one likes to talk about genre as a creative person, but I hear you in the context of modern classical or experimental. I hear jazz. I understand why people would take the record and put it in the jazz section, but I hear it as bigger than that.

Satoko Fujii: It may be better if I explain my music. I have so much experience. I play jazz. I inherit jazz spirit, not style. Jazz has changed all the time from the beginning. For me, jazz is not the music we can see in the museum. I wouldn't call it jazz if we saw it in the museum. Jazz is alive. I think it's still alive.

Jazz can eat anything. Jazz can bite anything. And jazz can change its style. Jazz is more like spirit. We just create something, not playing in the style. I think I'm a straight-ahead or mainstream jazz musician. I played at the Vancouver Jazz Festival. I said my music doesn't sound like traditional jazz, but I inherited the jazz spirit.

And in that case, I'm a mainstream jazz musician, and the audience started laughing. So, I probably might sound funny.

LP: No, that resonates for me. That makes sense.

Satoko Fujii: Thank you. (laughter) Especially when I moved back to Japan at some jazz club, many jazz fans, not just one, came to me and said, your music is not jazz. They were complaining, especially back there in Tokyo. People who love jazz are more into jazz that sounds from the fifties or sixties, bebop or post-bebop, hard bop.

My music didn't sound like jazz for them. I have good memories—quite bad experiences with that kind of stuff. But I just follow what I want to play. And, of course, I got all the influences from classical music, even pop music, Japanese music, and jazz. Everything I had came into my brain, and I mixed in my brain somehow.

LP: It's very interesting because there are a few things I'd like to talk about there. One is the idea of what the audience wants versus what the music is. I agree that there's nothing abnormal about what you're doing in the lineage and spirit of jazz. It's just moving the form along. And that's what you would hope musicians do. And then, as you said, there's a segment of the audience and even down to the venue, you know, a certain venue is identified with a certain style, genre, era, or collection of musicians. It used to be more like that in New York. My perception now in New York is that it's opened up a lot. I think of a club like The Blue Note. The Blue Note used to be very much like what you're talking about. You knew you were going to get a more traditional range of music. Now, I am looking at the programming there, and it's very exciting. They're bringing in hip hop artists and more vocals, and you know, it's just very exciting to see the music, like you said, eat up more of what's around it.

Satoko Fujii: Yeah, yeah.

LP: But the other piece is I always perceived the Japanese audience, and I know it's a bad generalization. Still, so many artists here in America are making new, creative music that seems to have much more of a receptive audience in Japan. I think about John Zorn and his colleagues and how they could go to Japan and be much bigger in the way the early jazz artists were in Europe.

They had to leave America and go to Europe. So it kind of surprises me to hear that there's that sort of traditionalist strand there.

Satoko Fujii: Some people love that kind of creative music. There are many fans of John Zorn, but they are different from a jazz audience. People who love traditional jazz don't like John Zorn. They hate that kind of music.

LP: Here, too, yeah.

Satoko Fujii: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think, you know, that's kind of world common. The big thing in Japan is that, just like in America, the government doesn't support culture.

LP: I wanted to ask you about that. It's not like a lot of Western European countries. There's not that same infrastructure for grants and government support.

Satoko Fujii: Like Europe or Canada, they greatly support culture. Like cities or government or whatever. Yeah. They have some kind of system that they pay for. In Japan, I think the basic idea is they cannot just give money to music. In that case, they need to give money to other things, not just culture. They are afraid to be complained about.

That was obvious when the pandemic happened. When musicians got so bad because there were no concerts, Germany was so great that they decided to support musicians very quickly. And all other governments, because they are looking at Europe and what they are doing. Well, in Japan, our government likes the American government very much. I think we are just following the American government.

If America decides something, maybe six months later, we do the same thing. There are many private grants in America, like MacArthur or Pulitzer, but there is almost nothing in Japan. So, unfortunately, we musicians are not supported by anything in Japan. But that was different in 60s, I think, 50s and 60s. I don't know who paid for that.

Maybe we were hungry for music and jazz after the Second World War. So people spent so much money on it. When musicians, especially American musicians, toured Japan, they could make a lot of money, and the conditions were very good. Still, some of them have that kind of same image. Almost daily, I get emails about it—"I would like to tour Japan."

I have to say so sorry, you will not get paid. You have to play with your money. Ticket sales and getting an audience are the most difficult things. Clubs cannot pay for the accommodation because nobody supports them. The situation in Japan is very bad. In that case, we still have a lot of very good musicians.

They still want to play music. And I think that's, again, good and bad. The situation is not good for us, but we need a strong reason to play music because we cannot make any money. Still, we would like to make music. This means only good music can survive.

LP: People with commitment.

Satoko Fujii: Yes.

LP: I know you've had periods when you lived in Europe, and you studied in America and lived in New York for a while. Was it ever a consideration to just leave and go somewhere else and try to build your career outside of Japan, or was it very important for you to be in Japan?

Satoko Fujii: When was it? My husband and I moved to Berlin because we wanted to see what's alive there, but it's difficult to deal with many things like taxes or pensions.

If we were young, probably we could do that. But I'm 65 years old, and my husband is 72 years old. Switching everything to Europe from Japan is difficult, and we already have a tax payment history in Japan. We decided to move back to Japan. Also, nowadays, being in America, Japan, or wherever doesn't make a big difference.

The address doesn't mean anything now. And yeah, we just don't want to be somewhere that is not peaceful. But as always, I think we can be any place.

LP: Our connection is a good example. We can have this conversation, and we're in very different time zones and locations.

To ask you more about composition, you described something Chick Corea said about practicing composition.

When I read that, it seemed obvious, but not something I had ever thought. In so much as I thought of it, you always imagine the composition, not something you can just throw away. Once you start it, you have to do it. And the idea that you could practice composing makes perfect sense, but I never thought about it.

What did that free up for you?

Satoko Fujii: For me, doing it daily means practice. As I told you, I have a music book called for myself, 'Diary.' I have many written stuff in there on an everyday basis. I don't write so much. I don't spend so much time, maybe 15 minutes to 20 minutes every day. So sometimes I can write eight bars.

Sometimes, I can only write four notes. When I need some pieces, I look at the book and find some good pieces that fit that project. Especially these five years, I use everything from that book. It's not practice. It's composition, but practice is like doing it every day and not just wasting, not just, you know, writing and throwing it away.

I use it.

LP: Given the variety of ensembles you compose for and perform with, do you have a preferred format, or is there a preferred palette for which you would like to compose? I know you work with larger ensembles but also trios, which is what we're here to discuss now.

Do you think about preference, or is it just the composition that tells you it needs a certain arrangement?

Satoko Fujii: For me, instrumentation is unimportant. It's more like who I can play with. It's more like, you know, I ended up having piano bass drums, traditional piano trio, but I wanted to play with that bass player, Takashi Sugawa. I wanted to play with Itetsu Takemura, and they played. So, I ended up having a traditional piano trio, but that doesn't mean I wanted to have this certain format for my music.

When people get together, more than two people, I think we have already made a society. We are social animals. People are social animals. It's bees or ants. We sense what I can do in that group; for example, my husband has a very good sense of direction. I'm not good at his, so when we go someplace, I just follow him. He knows his direction.

I don't like driving the car; my husband loves it and always drives it. I just sleep in the car. So everything is like that. I like cleaning the room, so I do that. He doesn't like it. He likes washing dishes, so he does that. We find what people always decide in the group—what I can do in this group.

Same thing in a band. Itetsu, the drummer, is a trio. He plays very sharp, very tight. Then I would like to put some other feeling. I put myself even more lyrical because of it. We try to balance and keep society alive. When I pick people, I try to imagine some kind of society, some sort of group, how we can enliven each other, how we can make ourselves even sound better.

LP: Do you have these kinds of conversations with the artists, or is this more of an intuitive feel or something that gets worked out as you play? How much of this is the intention that you've all talked about?

Satoko Fujii: I learned this from my experience. I didn't think like that at first.

And a long time ago, I had a trio with Mark Dresser and Jim Black. Mark said Mark and Jim never played together before my trio. All my friends in New York City were surprised I got in the same band. I just wanted to see, knowing they will sound great. I learned something. We behave differently in certain groups, and that was my study.

I don't explain this stuff to people or musicians, where I get burned. I just sense it. I cannot explain exactly because I just sense it.

LP: On an album like Jet Black where you have actual compositions as opposed to Unwritten. What is the composition that you're bringing to the band? From reading about you, I understand that you don't come in with full charts for everybody with everybody's parts written out, right? So are you bringing just head charts?

Are you bringing thematic melodies? What have you composed for the trio?

Satoko Fujii: This again depends. I don't want to bring many rhythm parts with this trio because I now know they are great improvisers. But still, I want to have some direction. I try not to write too fast too much. I try not to direct too much because I would like to get some spontaneous musical expression from them to make my music even more interesting.

LP: Does the piano still hold any mystery for you? Are you still learning?

Satoko Fujii: Of course (laughter) I'm still learning. Yeah, but I'm much, much more comfortable playing the piano. Yeah. I don't know why, but I'm a person who takes a long time to get everything, not just the piano. I'm not good at playing and getting everything very quickly.

I need just time. Then I can spend time. I can learn more somehow. But for some reason, after playing piano for over 60 years, I finally started feeling very comfortable. But I probably need another 60 years. (laughter)

LP: Do you know what's funny about that, though? In something I read, you quoted a teacher who told you that you might be pretty good by the time you were around 70.

So you're right on track.

Satoko Fujii: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. (laughter) He was right. Yeah.

LP: Well, I don't think anybody who could make a hundred or more albums in 26 or 28 years could be too slow at anything. (laughter)

Well, thank you so much for making time to do this. I'm looking forward to listening to even more of your music and going back into the catalog, and maybe at some point in the future, when I'm more knowledgeable, we could do this again.

Satoko Fujii: Thank you so much. Well, it was so nice talking to you. You said you knew nothing about me but seemed to know me a lot. (laughter)