Satoko Fujii and Joe Fonda
Mizu + Duet
(Long Song Records)

DURING one of my poetry classes with some 14-year-olds in Sheffield in 1993, a Pakistani boy and a Yemeni boy, Fiaz and Ghamdan, combined to write the poem Mizu — the Japanese word for water — about the human catastrophe of Hiroshima.

“Mizu! Mizu!”

Say the people of Hiroshima,

“We want water!”

A man comes to help,

He jumps onto a sandspit

Of one of the rivers of Ota.

He looks around him

And hundreds of people are saying

“Mizu! Mizu!”

He says, “There is no clean water,

The water is poisoned,

And the only clean water

runs down your face.

It is your tears.”

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The three tracks of Mizu were recorded by the duo in Belgium and Munich in 2017, with opener Rik Bevernage dedicated to the Belgian label-owner and it echoes with emotive power. The strings of Fonda pulsate with empathy while Fujii is provoked by his every note as she creates the steps of her own improvising journey.

The US and Japan elide with a musical intimacy that recalls Ellington's complex orchestral brilliance in Ad Lib on Nippon on his 1966 Far East Suite. As the 28 minutes of the track end, Fonda walks his bass with a grunting commentary and Fujii dazzles with her interpolations.

Depth and elevation unify too on the second track Long Journey. Fujii's notes rampage, as if this excursion were full of haste but Fonda's trusty bass, you know, will not leave her.

Her chimes which open final track Mizu are sometimes gong-like, sometimes like bells, while Fonda hustles his strings beside her. He plays them like drums before his volley of palpitating, reverberating notes throb as water becomes sound and sound itself liquefies over Fonda's howling vocalese and forlorn flute song.

The Mizu sessions were the second musical meeting of Fujii and Fonda. The first, at a Maine congregational church in November 2015, was also recorded and is available as the album Duet.

The first track, a 37-minute odyssey, is named after one of Fujii's prime inspirations, Montreal-born pianist Paul Bley.

Fonda's delving and twanging introduction, with its quasi-subterranean power, contrasts with the hurrying, galloping phrases of Fujii's keys and it's an intense colloquy of ringing sound and a race of mutual artistry. The unity of this twosome's musicianship astonishes, right up to the beautiful quietude of the track's ending.

On second track JSN, Fujii's trumpeter husband Natsuki Tamura's makes up a trio and his horn cavorts, barks and growls over Fonda's huge sunken notes.

Fujii strikes her piano with an immense power and assurance in a unique amalgam of inventive and soulful sound which made me wonder, all these years later, what Ghamdan and Fiaz would have made of it all.