Yuko Fujiyama: Night Wave
Innova
Two details serve as orienting entry-points for Yuko Fujiyama's Night Wave. The first describes an epiphany the Sapporo-born pianist experienced in her mid-twenties when, standing on a sidewalk in New York's East Village on a summer morning in 1980, she heard someone playing a Cecil Taylor tape (that someone none other than Taylor's drummer Jerome Cooper, to whom the album's title track is dedicated) and was awestruck by what she heard; so pivotal was the moment, in fact, it prompted her to move to the city in 1987 and begin performing in the early ‘90s. The second detail is a goal articulated by Fujiyama herself that involves exploring music's structures. “Recently,” she avers, “I've been trying to be free from a feeling of linear time. This album, Night Wave, is the result of my long search.” Aiding her in that exploration are Jennifer Choi (violin), Graham Haynes (cornet, flugelhorn), and Susie Ibarra (drums, percussion), each one sympathetic to the pianist's vision and wide open to improvisation's possibilities.
Recorded at Brooklyn's Systems Two in early 2017, the release presents fifteen tracks, a few eight to ten minutes but many short, some only a minute long. A major part of the satisfaction gleaned from the recording comes from the different configurations used for the performances: three feature the quartet, four the pianist alone, and the remainder pair Fujiyama with others in duos and trios. Accompanying each track are brief notes by the pianist that serve as interpretive prompts for the listener. In some cases, it's hardly necessary—a sense of conflict would come through clearly during the minute-long quartet piece “Clash” even if words (“Aggressive sounds. As if all four are arguing at once.”) hadn't been included and text is hardly needed for the self-explanatory “Fireworks” and “Leap”—whereas in other cases they prove enhancing.
Taylor helped open Fujiyama's eyes to “the abstract beauty of music,” and it's possible to hear echoes of his playing on Night Wave when a like-minded sense of liberation and untethering from regulated tempo infuses much of its material and lines between consonance and dissonance collapse. It isn't therefore jazz in the conventional sense (only “Leap” flirts with it and there tangentially), even if its music and players harbour connections to the tradition to varying degrees. Bridges between classical and jazz are erected in many a piece, in particular the solo piano settings and those featuring Choi, such as the duo “Romance” and trio title track. One might better think of the pieces as self-contained sound portraits or improv-styled conduits for self-expression as opposed to formal compositions whose notations the players replicate faithfully.
Fujiyama shows herself to be a player of remarkable imagination and flair in the solo pieces “Woven Colors” and “Indignation,” but Night Wave is hardly a platform for bald displays of technique. Though the players certainly demonstrate estimable individual talents on the fiery quartet setting “Up Tempo,” for example, contributions are made in service to the concept at hand; that said, there's no denying Choi and Haynes distinguish themselves in their energized solo turns, while Ibarra, rapidly oscillating between ride cymbals, hi-hats, and drums in tandem with the pianist, is a veritable whirlwind. That track's tumultuous mien is the exception to the rule, however, with many of the others sparse, meditative, and ponderous. The piano-and-percussion setting “Autumn Whispers” certainly exemplifies those qualities, but perhaps the most extreme manifestation is “Beyond the Sound,” a trio for piano, cornet, and xylophone that advances glacially with silence as central to the design as its minimal instrument sounds. Regardless of track differences, the impression created is of musicians creating communally, thinking in the moment and responsive to the considered expressions of others.May 2018