Time Stands Still

A later album by Satoko Fujii's Ma-Do quartet — the Japanese pianist-composer with trumpeter Natsuki Tamura, bassist Norikatsu Koreyasu and drummer Akira Horikoshi. Released by Not Two in 2014, Time Stands Still continues the group's exploration of the more subtle, acoustic side of Fujii's vast output, where intricate composition and free improvisation meet, deepening her long relationship with the label.

Liner notes:

Satoko Fujii ma-do is a quartet I formed in October 2007 with Natsuki Tamura, Norikatsu Koreyasu, and Akira Horikoshi. Though the format turned out to be a standard one-horn quartet, I wasn’t thinking about instrumentation when I invited these members to join me. Any time two or more people gather together, they create a “society.” What I wanted to do was make a society composed of these four individuals. I was absolutely sure that a very interesting society would arise from their particular combination of musical abilities and personalities. In the four years of its existence, ma-do became a band that far exceeded my expectations. Every time we performed, the sounds the group produced from the charts I provided never failed to astonish me. Performing with ma-do always stimulated and inspired me, and gave me the energy to create new compositions. To be honest, I began to wonder how we could possibly maintain such intensity in the future. As we entered the year 2011 we were doing more and more gigs: a Hokkaido tour in April, an Australian tour in early June, back to Tokyo for two nights in mid-June and then off for a North American tour, during which this recording was made in New York. To allow room for Norikatsu to use his bow freely during the recording, we had the studio mic placed where the bow wouldn’t hit it. Joe the engineer worried that we would be unable to get a good sound with the mic at that position. But when he went back to the control room, he was amazed – he’d never heard a bassist who could make his instrument project like that, he said. At this stage, our music seemed to be leaping to a new level with every performance. Only a few days after recording in New York, on the final day of our North American tour at the Vancouver Jazz Festival, our collective sound was more intense than ever. That September, we were exchanging frequent emails to work out the details for a European tour in November. Right up until Norikatsu’s sudden death on September 23, 2011, we were emailing each other about air tickets and itineraries. His wife was planning to come with us to Europe. Bandmates have a strange relationship. In ma-do, we didn’t go out drinking or take excursions together. It wasn’t like hanging out with your best friends. But when we played music, we knew we were communicating on a deep level. You can’t use music to talk about specific things, but you can share something even more profound. The four of us in ma-do did plenty of touring together, but during our time off the road we got together for dinner exactly once. We never visited each others’ homes, either. But there were times when I felt closer to my bandmates than to anyone else I know. The sounds musicians make in performance reveal everything about themselves as human beings. A single sound will tell you more about what kind of person the performer is than all the talk in the world. In his music and in his heart, Norikatsu Koreyasu was someone without a single lie in him. A musician without lies – I have never met anyone else like that. Early one morning about a month after Norikatsu died, he appeared to me in a dream. He didn’t say much – just, “It was fun playing together. But I have to go now” – and then he left. When I awoke, I felt calm and at peace. And yet I wish he had lived longer. I wanted to play with him more. It’s such a shame, such a waste, that this third album by ma-do has to be our last. This music was recorded during a period when the band was reaching new heights of intensity with every day. I hope listeners will take these once-in-a-lifetime sounds to heart.

(-Satoko Fujii July 19, 2012)