With over a hundred album releases in her discography, featuring solo outings and big band bashes and everything in between, pianist-composer Satoko Fujii could be thought to have “done it all.” But there was a missing link. Strings. Though she had recorded in duet outings with violinists Mark Feldman and Carla Kihlstedt, she had never written for or worked with a string ensemble. Always (always, always always) up for a challenge, she convened a group she called GEN, Japanese for string.
The resulting album is titled Altitude 1100 Meters. The inspiration? The air at that 3600-foot location in the highlands of the Nagano prefecture where Fujii summered with her elderly parents to escape the oppressive heat of…