Japanese flutist-composer Yuki Fujiwara plays the shinobue, a Japanese transverse bamboo flute with a high-pitched sound, and is often played along the huge taiko drums and the gong and cymbals kane in Japanese festivals. She is also a music therapist and teacher.
Glass Colored Lily is Fujiwara’s debut album, recorded at Bill Laswell’s Orange Music Studio in West Orange, New Jersey, with a stellar cast of Laswell’s regular associates, including multi-instrumentalist Peter Apfelbaum, guitarist Will Bernard and percussionist Adam Rudolph, Laswell himself on Ovation custom-made 8-string bass plus Japanese sax player Mitsuhiro Sonoyama.
Laswell, who also did the «mix-translation» of the album, describes the recording session with a Japanese phrase Ichi-go ichi-e (一期一会), a once-in-a-lifetime sonic encounter. The Greek label Defkaz that released Glass Colored Lily describes it as a «musical ship feels as if the pier exists in a strange space between the past and the future going on a journey to a land that is not here anymore and is not still there».
These descriptions scratch the surface of the rich, layered, and enigmatic musical universe of Fujiwara and her ensemble. The music is indeed timeless but has deep roots in the austere, sparse Japanese aesthetics of space, Ma (間). The story-like themes were thoroughly thought out but are open for individual and collective improvisation. The music is delicate, unfolds patiently, and suggests cinematic and mysterious, often dream-like images. The ensemble even sings a Japanese lullaby on «Night’s Dream is True〜Ai no-Uta».
Laswell, Apfelbaum, Bernard, and Rudolph enrich the musical vision of Fujiwara with great sensitivity but do not conform to Japanese aesthetics. They add imaginative, nuanced colors and shades and open the traditional, ritualist Japanese rhythms to uplifting, swinging pulses and African, tribal rhythms.
Eyal Hareuveni
Yuki Fujiwara (shinobue, vocals), Mitsuhiro Sonoyama (saxophone), Peter Apfelbaum (keyboards, clarinet, flute), Will Bernard (guitar), Bill Laswell (8-string bass, effects), Adam Rudolph (percussion)
