記憶の海 [The Other World of Erik Satie]

Riri Shimada may be Japan’s most unusual disciple of Satie. Some famous interpreters, like Satsuki Shibano or Aki Takahashi, are known for playing Satie’s works with exacting rigor. Shimada, from the beginning, seemed more interested in the avant-garde. She was present during the 1977 Continuous Performance No. 3 alongside fluxus pioneer Takehisa Kosugi and several others, warping one of the composer’s most vaunted compositions into a bizarre work of musical theater. In 1982, she would reunite with Kosugi, imbuing Satie’s famous Gnossiennes and Gymnopédies with the otherworldly power of his virtuoso violin. A year before, however, she would record a pair of concerts that were preserved on record as The Other World of Erik Satie. The standout of the set is a duo with tenor sax player Mototeru Takagi in which Shimada plays a series of Satie’s piano pieces while he freely improvises. On each of Shimada’s early Satie experiments, she pushes the boundaries of classical interpretation as she relinquishes some of the power to her collaborators; with Takagi at her side, music coming up on a century old becomes brand new.