Alister Spence and Satoko Fujii (JP) Natsuki Tamura (JP)

Duo and quartet performances by Spence and Fujii, Tamura and Simon Barker (drums)

As part of an ongoing musical collaboration with Sydney-based pianist/composer, Alister Spence – internationally acclaimed musicians, pianist/composer Satoko Fujii and trumpeter Natsuki Tamura will visit Australia in May.

Fujii and Tamura are two of the most original voices in improvised music today. Fujii is “a virtuoso piano improviser, an original composer and a band-leader who gets the best collaborators to deliver,” says John Fordham in The Guardian. In concert and on approximately 80 albums as a leader or co-leader, the Japanese native synthesizes jazz, contemporary classical, avant-rock and Japanese folk music into an innovative music instantly recognizable as hers alone.
Japanese trumpeter and composer Tamura is internationally recognized for a unique musical vocabulary that blends extended techniques with jazz lyricism. “His playing evokes the great trumpeter explorers of the seventies – Miles Davis, Don Cherry and Mongezi Feza – yet he would never be mistaken for any of them.” Brent Burton, Jazz Times

Alister is recognized as one of Australia’s most original and distinctive contemporary jazz pianists/composers. “Like the greatest jazz pianist-composers such as Monk and Ellington, Spence’s improvising shows a coherence and imagination that matches his compositional mastery.” Andy Hamilton, International Piano