Alister Spence Music and Satoko Fujii Orchestra Kobe - Imagine Meeting You Here

2019 release.

Imagine Meeting You Here pairs two of the world’s most adventurous composer-improvisers in a performance of a ground-breaking work for jazz orchestra. Pianist-composer Alister Spence, one of the leading voices in Australian new music, teams up with the Satoko Fujii Orchestra Kobe, one of several cutting-edge large ensembles helmed by prolific Japanese pianist-composer Satoko Fujii, on Spence’s riveting five-part composition for improvising orchestra. Fine craftsmanship and resourceful imagination meet wild spontaneity and instrumental virtuosity in a disciplined yet liberating CD that is both accessible and boundlessly creative.

“The project developed as part of my doctoral PhD in creative practice (music composition),” Spence says. “I decided to write a large-scale work for improvising ensemble and approached Satoko Fujii and the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra and offered to write this work for them: the same work, called ‘Imagine Meeting You Here.’ Both Satoko and GIO were very keen about the idea and straight away suggested performances in Japan and Scotland. In February 2016 the work was performed by three of Satoko Fujii’s Orchestras in Nagoya, Kobe, and Tokyo, and in November Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra included the work in their annual festival, GioFestIX.”

During a return trip to Japan in September 2017, Orchestra Kobe recorded the piece live at the Big Apple jazz club. Besides playing in the orchestra, Fujii handled most of the complex logistics for this international project. “Satoko performed so many tasks in this project!” Spence enthuses. “I was trying to create what I considered to be a balanced work in terms of energies and weight, tempo, rhythm, my ideas versus the ensembles ideas,” says Spence. “And I also was seeking to create different improvisational contexts for solos, duos, trios, and larger ensembles from within the orchestra. Sometimes these were designed as an exploration of textural elements such as breath or key click sounds, and sometimes were more tonal.”

Imagine Meeting You Here does indeed strike an artful balance among a wealth of musical elements while blending composition and improvisation.