It's perhaps every artist's dream to release a record that takes fans on a journey, because often, in the contemporary music scene, sounds and lyrics seem to be unable to engage enough those listeners hoping to find themselves emotionally involved in a musical body of work.
The latter, rather fortunately, doesn't seem to apply to Japanese Pianist and Composer Naoko Sakata, an artist that our website has being following since Day One of her remarkable career, an artist that has that unique talent of transporting effortlessly the listener in her own personal world through the intensity, class and overwhelming passion that transpires every time out of Sakata's sublime improvisational compositions.
The Sweden-based Pianist and Composer, after mesmerizing many music fans around the world with Sakata's 2020 solo debut album Inner Planets, swiftly followed by another stunning record released in 2021 and called Dancing Spirits, has continued to explore her relationship with the universe surrounding the artist herself, by working tirelessly on new compositions that could perfectly reflect Sakata's vision about music and its connection and correlation with human souls, the space intended in all its vastity, numbers and symbolisms.
Released earlier this year, Sakata's new and rather exciting record called Infinity, it is one of the most open and incredibly honest windows in the soul of an artist, thanks to 6 improvisational piano solo pieces that were recorded in only two sessions at Annedalskyrkan, in Sweden, in July 2022.
Infinity is one of those records that captures one's imagination at first listen already, thanks to Naoko Sakata's unmistakable trademark approach to music, where freedom of expression embraces imagination rather magically, through a series of sonic passages that seem to be able to speak and connect to one's soul more than thousands words could do.
Every Improvisation part of that marvelous record that is Infinity, it is a breathtaking ride into Sakata's most inner feelings, where doubts, fears, hopes, joy, melancholy and beliefs collide into each other very naturally and beautifully, without any restrain or having to follow a forced sonic path.
One of the winning elements of Naoko Sakata's unique music style is and (we suspect) always will be extemporaneity, that immediacy that the Japanese Pianist and Composer put in everything she creates and Sakata's new record is no exception.
Going through a description of each of the 6 Improvisations part of Infinity, it would be as revealing the storyline and the finale of a movie to somebody that has not watched said movie yet. Just as it may happen in a good movie, every piece of Sakata's new record needs to be heard and felt with necessary and profound attention and intensity, because at the end of it, the almost liberating, uplifing feeling that each listener would have, it will be different from one another.
Infinity is another wonderful and beatifully conceived and executed chapter in the music career of one of the most talented, original and inspired artists of the contemporary music scene worldwide. Naoko Sakata has done it again!
Infinity is out now and it is available to be purchased via Bengans
