Satoko Fujjii – recently and memorably described by Cadence magazine as “the Ellington of free jazz” – is a woman so prolific she makes the likes of Ivo Perelman and Alexander Hawkins look like laggards; she must have made northward of 120 albums now. This new trio of releases is testament to both her energy and creative fecundity and her ability to work her magic within a bewildering variety of settings and contexts.

After two live recordings, Tokyo Trio’s third release, Dream a Dream is a studio session. The result is little different in this new setting: the group’s chemistry allows them to navigate Fujii’s compositions as well as improvise with telepathic unity, combining both individual and collective expression. Opening ‘Second Step’ sets the scene with Fujii’s unaccompanied introduction giving way to a tsunami of crashing notes and an engaging main theme. As with everything else on this album, the piece’s course and outcome are imossible to predict. Full of contrasting moods and unexpected twists, Dream… is a delight from start to finish.

GEN is Fujii’s new string ensemble and Altitude 1100 Meters is a five-part suite the pianist wrote in 2023 to celebrate her own 65th birthday. The rich, resinous sonorities of the assembled strings give her plenty of opportunities to explore new possibilities both with her piano and her compositional chops. It’s an astonisingly varied debut, full of evocations of mist and light and air.

Finally, Yama Kawa Umi’s opener ‘Headwaters’ begins explosively, jolting the listener into attention before giving way to limpid piano prior to a thunderous wall of exhilirating sound. And the album continues in much the same vein thereafter; at first listen it sounds like unstructured noise but this is music that’s fundamentally about contrasts, moods, sound worlds and dynamics. Standout track ‘Sparkling Water’ demonstrates this beautifully, moving from limpid to funky to thunderous and back again. Splendid stuff.