Satoko Fujii ma-do

Wed., Sept. 3, 8 p.m., $12, Rose Recital Hall (Room 419), Fisher-Bennett Hall, University of Pennsylvania, 3340 Walnut St., 866-468-3401, arsnovaworkshop.com.

by Shaun Brady

jazz

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The name of prolific Japanese pianist Satoko Fujii's new quartet, "ma-do," translates as "window," while "ma," she says, also refers to the silence between notes. There are moments when the group slows down to explore some more spacious interludes, but no one could mistake their new CD, Heat Wave (Not Two), for an ECM-style excursion into sonic somnambulism. The former meaning seems the more apt here, as a window merely implies openness — the glass could open onto a vast horizon or onto a blunt brick wall. Fujii writes dense clusters of music, which her group — trumpeter Natsuki Tamura, bassist Norikatsu Koreyasu and drummer Akira Horikoshi — performs with brisk, mercurial vigor. Even at its quietest, in improvised segments of scraping strings and squealing horn, there's an electric impatience to this musical collage, a sense of ideas forcing themselves forward, shoving past the obstacle of time.

Wed., Sept. 3, 8 p.m., $12, Rose Recital Hall (Room 419), Fisher-Bennett Hall, University of Pennsylvania, 3340 Walnut St., 866-468-3401, arsnovaworkshop.com.