Rafale by Kaze

French drummer Peter Orins and trumpeter Christian Pruvost join Satoko Fujii and Natsuki Tamura to form an electrifying new collective quartet called Kaze on their debut recording, Rafale. Fujii met Orins in November 2002, when her Japanese quartet played on a double bill with Impression in Lille, France. “I had very bad jet lag, but I didn’t feel sleepy at all while they performed before our set because I was so fascinated with their performance,” Fujii explains in her liner notes to the album. “It was not like any music I had heard before. It is wild but it is also very intellectual.”

Almost eight years later, she and Tamura had a chance to perform with Orins and he suggested that they play with Pruvost as well. “His playing is extraordinary—beyond our expectations,” Fujii says. “It sounds unlike anything else.” Their next opportunity to play as a quartet came eight months later in November 2010 in Krakow, at a concert in celebration of the bicentennial of Frederick Chopin’s birth. Tamura composed “Noise Chopin” in honor of the occasion and the great Polish pianist-composer’s spirit hovers over the music on more than one occasion. It was this concert that became Rafale.

The quartet has an instant chemistry and it’s clear from the beginning that there’s no predicting where they will take the music. For instance, on Orins’s “Marie – T,” drummer and pianist engage in a duet of strange juxtapositions and odd contrasts, Fujii playing an explosive, ebbing and flowing solo as Orins maintains a subdued, even-keeled percussion commentary. Then as Fujii plays beautiful, almost Chopin-like chords, Orins counters with eerie high-pitched electronic tones. Tamura and Pruvost are trumpet soulmates, both possessed of antic imaginations and an insatiable curiosity about the kinds of sounds they can get from their instrument. Their opening duet on “Polly” is an extraordinary dialogue of bizarre sounds produced by extended techniques that is both wildly inventive and completely musical. Even as Orins pushes the band with a punishing groove, the trumpeters continue to banter back and forth, inspiring one another. Fujii’s “The Thaw” brings out the group’s more lyrical side, but they still mix sonic abstractions into their melodic improvising. “I hope to keep this project going and see how it grows in future,” Fujii says. “For musicians, getting good collaborators means a lot. It is like getting the best friends in life.”

Orins and Pruvost are both members of the musicians’ collective, Muzzix, based in Lille, France. They are involved together in several project of this collective, such as Circum Grand Orchestra, La Pieuvre, Impression, … and both develop their solo work, Christian Pruvost released his first solo recording in 2010, Ipteravox.

Melodic, abstract, mysterious, beautiful, and confrontational, Kaze plays free jazz at its most creative and powerful.

Satoko Fujii : piano, Nastuki Tamura & Christian Pruvost : trumpet, Peter Orins : drums

peterorins.com
satokofujii.com
natsukitamura.com
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