TOMAS FUJIWARA, born in Boston in 1977, started on drums when he was seven and heard his dad’s record of a Max Roach/Buddy Rich drums contest.

“No-one else in my family is a musician,” he tells me, “so music was something very much of my own. I had to figure it out as I went along, with the encouragement and support of my parents.

“As a teenager I liked Dr Dre, Mary J Blige and Nas, and by 16 I was listening very seriously to jazz albums on labels like Blue Note, Impulse! and Prestige.

“I learned so much from my teacher, the great drummer and educator, Alan Dawson.

“He was the foundation of everything I do musically, how I express myself and communicate with fellow musicians and listeners.

“His approach to teaching, his concepts and exercises were all about balance, musicality, process, patience and being a positive contributor to an ensemble.

“With my high school teacher Robert Ponte, Alan taught me the jazz repertoire. Then I heard Lee Morgan's trumpet on the Jazz Messengers’ album Moanin’. It was a big inspiration, also the sounds of Thelonious Monk and Dizzy Gillespie.”

At 17 Fujiwara moved to New York and lived in Brooklyn. As well as playing in bands like the Hook Up Quintet and the trio Thumbscrew, he became a composer for the theatre, film and dance and a prominent jazz presence on the New York scene.

His band of powerful musical souls, Triple Double, formed in 2017, includes two drummers (Fujiwara and Gerald Cleaver); two guitarists (Mary Halvorson and Brandon Seabrook) and two trumpeters (Ralph Alessi withTaylor Ho Bynum playing cornet). Their new album is March, featuring Fujiwara’s compositions.

I ask him about the double instruments. “The formation of Triple Double had very little to do with choice of instrumentation, much more about the sounds and personalities of the musicians and thinking how they would interact and blend. Triple Double is definitely about the unique people involved in making the music.

“I like the idea of mirroring the instrumental pairs, but not too literally. We share common instruments that we’ve played most of our lives and we use these to express ourselves, but our paths and forms of expression are vastly different, although also complementary.

“There’s common language but different and personal usage of that language to create our own stories, both collectively and independently. We have our conversations through sound and music.”

What about the album’s title, March? Does he see it symbolising a struggle for justice during an era of George Floyd’s murder and the resistance to it, and Donald Trump’s outrages?

“It expresses some of those things and a lot more, and most importantly, I’d like each listener to interpret the sounds in their own personal way, hoping they relate to them as individuals in a society/community.”

The spirit of unity in contradiction is central in the album, especially in tracks like Docile Fury Ballad, Life Gets Only More or For Alan, Part 2 — a tribute to Dawson where the musicianship is poundingly brilliant, with Fujiwara and Cleaver’s incessantly creative drums and Alessi and Ho Bynum stretching the soul and ears with Seabrook and Halvorson’s guitars raging and placating with simultaneous artistry.

I ask Fujiwara, is the band coming across the waves soon?

“We love to perform and are seeking live settings for engaged audiences. We were in Geneva in March and hope to be back in Europe soon.”

Don’t miss them when they’re playing here again — some of the finest improvisers either side of the Atlantic, that’s for sure.

March by Tomas Fujiwara’s Triple Double is released by Firehouse Records.