Masahiko Satoh & Giotis Damianidis
© joao lobo
Despite the geographic distance and a 40-year age difference, Japanese pianist Masahiko Satoh and Greek guitarist Giotis Damianidis are kindred souls in a certain sense, each possessing a keen understanding of how improvised music can magically erase such boundaries. Thousand Leaves captures their very first meeting in 2024, but the listener can be forgiven for making assumptions that the artistic bond possessed by these musicians stretches back much longer.
While Satoh sticks with an acoustic piano and Damianidis embraces an amplified guitar sound closer to rock music than jazz, they reveal a strong rapport, entwining, colliding, and considering how their very distinctive threads fit together, in real time. Even as the guitarist produces flinty sparks, distortion, and effects-driven bends and swoop, Satoh’s quicksilver improvisations manage to draw upon a separate set of modalities, his elegant playing steeped in classical music cadences as much as post-bop runs. It’s thrilling to hear how two totally separate voices find a common ground without having to compromise or bend personal languages.
Pianist Masahiko Satoh remains a titanic figure in the rich history of jazz and improvised music in Japan, an artist of broad interests, ceaseless curiosity, and jaw-dropping versatility. After working alongside Sadao Watanabe as rising keyboardist in Tokyo he traveled to the US to study jazz at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston, and upon returning to his homeland in 1968 his practice expanded dramatically, enfolding the emerging free jazz scene, psychedelic tendencies, and film and television work. He’s worked with figures as disparate as Art Farmer, Jean-Luc Ponty, Midori Takada, Anthony Braxton, and Peter Brötzmann, among others. Simply put, Satoh’s musicianship revealed no boundaries.
The Greek guitarist’s creative path took a much different direction. He emerged from the underground rock scene in his native Thessaloniki, but fanned out to make space for everything between rembetika to Afrobeat, but his quest was driven by a love for improvised music. His growing interests led him to studies in Rotterdam and then Brussels, where he has lived and worked since 2006.
Performing back in Thessaloniki in 2018, the guitarist performed with the legendary Japanese saxophonist Akira Sakata for the first time—another key figure of the Japanese free jazz explosion —and the experience busted open an evolving connection to the creative music community in Japan for Damianidis.
The performance led to the formation of the ensemble Entasis with Sakata and Damianidis joined by Giovanni Di Domenico, Alexandar Škorić and occasionally Petros Damianidis. The group went on to tour across Europe several times between 2022-24, with Trost releasing its stunning
debut album Live in Europe in 2023. In 2024 the guitarist finally made his first trip to Japan where he met and performed with Satoh for the first time, a meeting now immortalized on Thousand Leaves. While their electric connection is obvious on this first encounter, they’ve subsequently built upon the experience, touring Europe as a duo in the fall of 2024. More recently the guitarist returned to Japan for additional duo performances as well as a first-time quartet with Sakata and Tatsuhisa Yamamoto.
While Satoh sticks with an acoustic piano and Damianidis embraces an amplified guitar sound closer to rock music than jazz, they reveal a strong rapport, entwining, colliding, and considering how their very distinctive threads fit together, in real time. Even as the guitarist produces flinty sparks, distortion, and effects-driven bends and swoop, Satoh’s quicksilver improvisations manage to draw upon a separate set of modalities, his elegant playing steeped in classical music cadences as much as post-bop runs. It’s thrilling to hear how two totally separate voices find a common ground without having to compromise or bend personal languages.
Pianist Masahiko Satoh remains a titanic figure in the rich history of jazz and improvised music in Japan, an artist of broad interests, ceaseless curiosity, and jaw-dropping versatility. After working alongside Sadao Watanabe as rising keyboardist in Tokyo he traveled to the US to study jazz at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston, and upon returning to his homeland in 1968 his practice expanded dramatically, enfolding the emerging free jazz scene, psychedelic tendencies, and film and television work. He’s worked with figures as disparate as Art Farmer, Jean-Luc Ponty, Midori Takada, Anthony Braxton, and Peter Brötzmann, among others. Simply put, Satoh’s musicianship revealed no boundaries.
The Greek guitarist’s creative path took a much different direction. He emerged from the underground rock scene in his native Thessaloniki, but fanned out to make space for everything between rembetika to Afrobeat, but his quest was driven by a love for improvised music. His growing interests led him to studies in Rotterdam and then Brussels, where he has lived and worked since 2006.
Performing back in Thessaloniki in 2018, the guitarist performed with the legendary Japanese saxophonist Akira Sakata for the first time—another key figure of the Japanese free jazz explosion —and the experience busted open an evolving connection to the creative music community in Japan for Damianidis.
The performance led to the formation of the ensemble Entasis with Sakata and Damianidis joined by Giovanni Di Domenico, Alexandar Škorić and occasionally Petros Damianidis. The group went on to tour across Europe several times between 2022-24, with Trost releasing its stunning
debut album Live in Europe in 2023. In 2024 the guitarist finally made his first trip to Japan where he met and performed with Satoh for the first time, a meeting now immortalized on Thousand Leaves. While their electric connection is obvious on this first encounter, they’ve subsequently built upon the experience, touring Europe as a duo in the fall of 2024. More recently the guitarist returned to Japan for additional duo performances as well as a first-time quartet with Sakata and Tatsuhisa Yamamoto.
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