Minamo

On "Minamo" the violinist Carla Kihlstedt and the pianist Satoko Fujii ply the craft of post-jazz musicians all over the world: live, free-improvisation duets. Most records like this imply that the two musicians rarely get a chance to play together. (If they did, they might invest in the partnership more: write some music, book a studio, set up a Web site for the project, give it a name.) And some are perfunctory, of course. But not this one. "Minamo" is extraordinary, a series of tight, dramatic events.

Both Ms. Kihlstedt, who lives in California, and Ms. Fujii, who lives in Japan, have conservatory backgrounds. Both eventually threw themselves into non-genre-specific writing and improvising, drawing on rock, Cecil Taylor, Bartok and much else; you're more likely to find them in a jazz festival than any other kind. (Ms. Kihlstedt is a member of the bands Sleepytime Gorilla Museum and 2 Foot Yard; Ms. Fujii leads her own trio, quartet and orchestra.) They performed together onstage in 2002 and 2005, in San Francisco and in Wels, Austria, and this disc captures both concerts.

Even without written music the musicians have plenty of ground under their feet: vamps, patterns, echoed motions. Both play with virtuosic precision and a great range of technique, even when the music becomes gestural and built on hummingbird pulses, glassy wipes of the violin strings, dark rumbles of rubbed piano strings. The whole record, but especially the second concert, runs on its own vivid tension.
     - Ben Ratliff, The New York Times

This 51-minute CD represents the complete recorded works of the duo of violinist Carla Kihlstedt and pianist Satoko Fujii: three tracks totaling 24 minutes from the kick-off concert of ROVA's silver anniversary season and a 27 minute piece from the Larry Ochs-curated 2005 Wels Music Unlimited festival. Both performances were improvised introductions to the saxophone quartet, and the brevity of these sets may be a key to the success of the music, which has the concentration and focus of the most intense modernist chamber music. It's not just the instrumentation that will suggest a classical sonata. Kihlstedt and Fujii are clearly steeped in genre and in the repertoire, with the strongest affinities being to Bartok and Prokofiev (with a nod to the special impressionism of Takemitsu). It's tense and tensile stuff, with a steely formal intelligence just beneath the surface.

The playing is absolutely beautiful, and oddly enough it's beautiful in that classical way in which you might separate an individual's performance from the music that he or she is playing. There are moments here, as in the spontaneous melody of "One Hundred and Sixty Billion Spray," that are executed so well it wouldn't matter what the notes are (if such a distinction could be made, and it often is). But the two are actually making this up from the material of their interaction. Fujii is especially adept at elaborating form, sometimes creating a complex dialogue between left and right hands that follows, frames and amplifies Kihlstedt's lines. That expressive richness here (the Bartok/ Prokofiev lineage) springs from Kihlstedt's profound sound and attack, as rich and dynamic as any violinist who has entered the improvising community.

The way the two will choose pure sound to frame one another is also noteworthy. Kihlstedt's use of harmonics is forceful enough to suggest electronics while Fujii finds tremendous resources on the piano strings, creating sustained atmospherics like sea and rain shower and gravel. The later "Remainder of One, Reminder of Two" has the evanescence of Crumb's "Night Music." It's all delivered with the special intensity of people who didn't have a long time to get acquainted. Not so much a triumph of improvised music over the composed, rather it's improvised music that's acting like a special kind of through composition.
     - Stuart Broomer, Point of Departure

Featuring two live recordings from performances at Rova Saxophone Quartet's 25th Anniversary Festival in San Francisco in 2002 and the Music Unlimited Festival in Wels Austria in 2005, this exhilarating record demonstrates the highest levels of musical interaction.

Kihlstedt is known mainly for her work in the avant-garde group Tin Hat and the art-rock group Sleepytime Gorilla Museum. Fujii is an icon in the avant-garde world, working in many configurations and instrumentations from duo to big band.The two players met for the first time at the San Francisco festival and the degree of communication verges on the unbelievable. Both players described the experience in almost mystical terms, especially Kihlstedt:

"The very first time we played together we found an inexplicably mutual language that has, since then, been an amazing fertile playground for us. We always seem to arrive at places that neither of us could possibly find on our own. It's one of those rare and exciting moments in which I don't feel like we're improvising so much as we're uncovering whole fields of lost artifacts."

Fujii and Kihlstedt listen very closely to each other and respond to each other's gestures, shifting from lead to accompaniment effortlessly. Development happens organically and with such an extremely natural feeling that at times the music sounds composed. Part of the joy of listening to Minamo are the many different sounds and textures created both individually and together. While the music can get quite dense at times, there are many other instances of beauty. Excitement is never far away as the smallest seed is seized upon and then expanded-this is what makes the record wonderful. The last track, "Remainder of one, Reminder of two" is over twenty-six minutes without one second of flab or diminished concentration, and thus the music is easy to follow. Listening thus becomes for the listener the same journey that Kihlstedt and Fujii took on stage. Minamo is a triumph.
     - Budd Kopman, All About Jazz

Henceforth confirme sa direction entre improvisation et musique contemporaine dans une tentative de concilier des beautés concurrentes. Carla Kihlstedt et Satoko Fujii font une musique très improvisée qui retient des musiques contemporaines et classiques la qualité du son et de l’intonation, la précision particulière à ceux qui se sont astreints à la discipline classique sans en être entamés. On entend dans ce duo la présence d’un énorme corpus de musique autour des deux musiciennes et la capacité de jouer ensemble nouée par des corps instruits. Elles ajoutent à cela une capacité réelle à improviser sans se perdre : on pourra leur en faire le reproche ou bien aimer infiniment la sûreté de leur art plein de force et de grâce. Elles jouent toutes deux avec gourmandise, semblent attraper d’une main les beautés mélodiques et, de l’autre, la pâte sonore, et les faire tournoyer dans le plus grand plaisir qu’autorise une technique impeccable. Pour ma part, on l‘aura compris, je suis conquis.
     - Noel Tachet, Improjazz France