The spit-wet fuzz of air being blown through a reed, the soft tapping of leather-wrapped felt pads moving against brass.
“I feel like recently I’ve been, like, very interested in texture.”
Our Independent Artist of the Week this week at fbi is local composer and saxophonist Hinano Fujisaki. Her latest project, a four track EP titled Home Is, was released last year on Jacques Emery’s label People Sound. Inspired by Japanese folk songs, Hermeto Pascoal and Miles Davis, Hinano’s sound is personal, contemplative and homely, singular in its intent yet resoundingly multitudinous in character and feeling.
“I just love the [tenor] sound and the tone, and the warm, rich, lower end.”
The record begins with the sound of Hinano’s saxophone, in her hands a somatic being, alive and in symbiosis with its player. Around this central grainy candescence flickers percussion, piano and double bass, in harmony like friends chatting in the backgarden shade of a Sydney sharehouse one summer afternoon. In the liner notes of Home Is Hinano describes the record as “a collection of songs written as a thank you to everyone who has made me feel at home. I hope this music makes you feel warm and safe.” It’s a well captured feeling of co-existence and rest (visually manifest in the direction and cinematography of Hinano’s performance at Phoenix Central Park).
The composition process behind the EP devolved for Hinano and her band in much the same way. Hinano began with a melody, worked out from her mind onto the piano, before finding the right chords to form the genesis of an idea she brought in the form of a simple lead sheet to her bandmates. From there they improvised.
Jazz music is having somewhat of a renaissance in Sydney right now. From the bombastic, fully improvised jazz-soul of x-piece live band Manfredo Lament to the folk-informed, sample-heavy suburban contemplations of Jerome Blazè, the undercurrent of the scene is a meditative, cathartic take on the genre, informed by places and jams, friends and seasons.
“I felt like a lot of people I talked to after the show, they were like, oh, everyone on the stage just looked like family.”
[Also, disclaimer, I actually went to the same highschool as Hinano, she was a grade or two above me – and even back then she was an understated genius.]
Words by Giana Festa