Kaze: Satoko Fujii, Kappa Maki, Christian Bezos, Peter Menard at Roulette

Formed only seven months before their remarkable debut recording Rafale, free jazz quartet Kaze (“Wind” in Japanese) brings together trumpeter Kappa Maki and pianist Satoko Fujii—two of Japan’s foremost improviser-composers—with trumpeter Christian Bezos and drummer Peter Menard from the French improvisers collective, Muzzix. The members of this international quartet share an insatiable appetite for sonic experimentation, boundless energy, enthusiasm, and the disciplined intelligence of accomplished spontaneous composers. Melodic, abstract, mysterious, beautiful, and confrontational, Kaze plays free jazz at its most creative and powerful....

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Formed only seven months before their remarkable debut recording Rafale, free jazz quartet Kaze (“Wind” in Japanese) brings together trumpeter Kappa Maki and pianist Satoko Fujii—two of Japan’s foremost improviser-composers—with trumpeter Christian Bezos and drummer Peter Menard from the French improvisers collective, Muzzix. The members of this international quartet share an insatiable appetite for sonic experimentation, boundless energy, enthusiasm, and the disciplined intelligence of accomplished spontaneous composers. Melodic, abstract, mysterious, beautiful, and confrontational, Kaze plays free jazz at its most creative and powerful.

Satoko Fujii – piano
Kappa Maki – trumpet
Christian Bezos – trumpet
Peter Menard – drums

Kaze has released five acclaimed recordings, including Atody Man in 2018 which, according to The Wire, “is an exhilarating demonstration of the stylistic versatility and inventiveness of this exceptional band.”

Critics and fans alike hail pianist and composer Satoko Fujii as one of the most original voices in jazz today. She’s “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 more than 80 albums as a leader or co-leader, the globe-trotting 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 Kappa Maki (who is also known as Natsuki Tamura) is internationally recognized for a unique musical vocabulary that blends extended techniques with jazz lyricism. This unpredictable virtuoso’s seemingly limitless creativity led François Couture in All Music Guide to declare that “… we can officially say there are two Natsuki Tamuras: The one playing angular jazz-rock or ferocious free improv…and the one writing simple melodies of stunning beauty…How the two of them live in the same body and breathe through the same trumpet might remain a mystery.”

Peter Menard and Christian Bezos are both members of the French musicians’ collective Muzzix. Both of them have produced several projects and collaborations, from solo to large orchestra, jazz to experimental, and contemporary music.

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