Based in Brooklyn, Fujiwara has also earned renown as a composer and bandleader who performs and records with some of the most exciting musicians of the current generation. He’s been described by Point of Departure as “a ubiquitous presence in the New York scene…an artist whose urbane writing is equal to his impressively nuanced drumming.” He leads and composes for a number of ensembles, including Tomas Fujiwara’s Triple Double (with Halvorson, Taylor Ho Bynum, Ralph Alessi, Brandon Seabrook, and Gerald Cleaver), and Tomas Fujiwara’s 7 Poets Trio (with Patricia Brennan and Tomeka Reid), which released its eponymous debut in 2019 on the Rogue Art label. Tomas Fujiwara & The Hook Up (with Halvorson, Jonathan Finlayson, and Brian Settles) released three albums on the 482 label, including Actionspeak (2010, with bassist Danton Boller), The Air Is Different (2012, with bassist Trevor Dunn), and After All Is Said (2015, with Formanek). He’s also released Variable Bets (2014, Relative Pitch) featuring the Tomas Fujiwara Trio with Ralph Alessi and Brandon Seabrook. His collaborative duo with Taylor Ho Bynum has released three albums, True Events (2007, 482 Music), Stepwise (2010, NotTwo Records), and Through Foundation (2014, self-released).
Fujiwara engages in a diversity of creative work with Anthony Braxton, John Zorn, Matana Roberts, Joe Morris, Nicole Mitchell, Ben Goldberg, Tomeka Reid, Amir ElSaffar, Benoit Delbecq, and many others. In 2021, he won the Downbeat Critics Poll for Rising Star Drummer, and premiered two suites of new music as part of his Roulette Residency: “You Don’t Have to Try” (with Meshell Ndegeocello) and “Shizuko,” a suite dedicated to his grandmother, featuring Taylor Ho Bynum, Tomeka Reid, Rafiq Bhatia, and Davi Vieira. In a New York Times profile, the paper described Fujiwara’s expansive musical parameters, noting that he “works with rhythm as a pliable substance, solid but ever shifting. His style is forward-driving but rarely blunt or aggressive, and never random. He has a way of spreading out the center of a pulse while setting up a rigorous scaffolding of restraint…A conception of the drum set as a full-canvas instrument, almost orchestral in its scope.”