Pianist-composer Satoko Fujii would normally have been on tour, but as it was for many musicians, 2020 was spent at home. And like so many of her peers, she used the off-time creatively. Hazuki is a solo piano album recorded in her home practice room. The opening track, “Invincible,” is quietly insistent, subtly unnerving, an emotionally uneasy piece that would work well in the score for a psychological horror film. Echoes of jazz and discordant modernism can be heard in “Quarantined”—as well as uncertainty. The mood she seeks to strike is summarized in the rhapsodic “Hoffen” (German for hope).
