Masahiko Satoh / Giotis Damianidis - Thousand Leaves 千 葉

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.

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.

Recorded live on the 2nd of February 2024
at Jazz Spot Candy, Chiba, Japan by Kosuke Kohashi