Uminari by Kaze

Uminari is a Japanese word that refers to a sound rising from the sea, a low-frequency roar that portends a coming storm or tsunami. The poetic word serves an ideal title for the third CD from the unconventional international quartet Kaze. The two-horn quartet is equally adept at the calm and the storm, with expressive subtleties giving way to overwhelming torrents of sound.

Japanese pianist Satoko Fujii and trumpeter Natsuki Tamura reunite with French trumpeter Christian Pruvost and drummerPeter Orins for the band’s most evocative and inventive outing to date. The music for Uminari was developed over the course of a 12-day tour of Japan during which skeletal compositions by each of the quartet’s members were elaborated and experimented on by the group as a whole.

“Every day we decided to play with different ideas,” Fujii recalls. “Today we’ll play the piece one way, the next day a completely different way. We wrote very simple music beforehand and developed it together.”

Uminari opens at gale force with “Tioky Atsimo,” the first piece to date contributed to the ensemble by Pruvost. The heady whorl of sound ultimately subsides to a stutter-stop rhythm by Fujii and Orins, accompanied by breathy rasps and brassy bleats by the trumpeters, who ultimately fall in line with the insistent beat. A second eruption ensues, as the piece becomes an exercise in forming order out of chaos.

Orins’ “Vents Contraires” follows from the opposite extreme, starting from a place of shimmering stillness with the drummer’s scraped cymbals and a low murmur from the horns. The piece builds gradually in intensity over half of its 14 minutes before dissolving into pointillistic shards. “Running Around,” the first of two Fujii compositions on the album, begins with a circuitous melody articulated by the trumpeters, ceding to a fragmented groove from the rhythm section. At the midpoint it becomes a play of dynamics and silences among the four musicians.

Tamura’s “Inspiration,” at 20 minutes the album’s longest piece, showcases the trumpeter’s trademark humor with an textured array of percussion, extended techniques, prepared piano, and toy instruments. The set closes with Fujii’s dark, impressionistic title track combining heartfelt, dirge-like melodicism with tempestuous improvisation.

Fujii and Tamura originally met Orins in 2002 when the pianist’s quartet shared a bill with the drummer’s collective Impression in his hometown of Lille, France. Nearly a decade later they crossed paths again and Orins suggested a collaboration with Pruvost, inaugurating Kaze’s unusual instrumentation.

“We immediately became friends,” Fujii says. “We felt like we shared the same kind of musical values. And we had so much fun doing this group we just kept playing together.”

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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