Improvising musicians are like kids: nothing’s more fun than a playdate with a new pal. And that’s exactly how Japanese pianist Satoko Fujii’s ongoing musical collaboration with Tin Hat Trio violinist Carla Kihlstedt came about, thanks to their mutual acquaintance Larry Ochs. The Bay Area bandleader wanted both of them to collaborate with his Rova Saxophone Quartet during its 25th-anniversary celebrations in 2002, and while he was at it, he also decided they should play a short set as a duo.

At that point, they’d never met. By the time their first encounter was over, they were each other’s new best friend.

"I didn’t know about Carla at all, and Carla didn’t know about me," Fujii relates, reached at home in Tokyo. "But we just played together, and we really loved doing that."

The results of their initial leap of faith can be heard on the duo’s 2007 release Henceforth, which also includes an excerpt from a 2005 meeting at an Austrian jazz festival. The performances, which range from melodic interplay to scrabbly noisemaking, are remarkably intuitive, and bode well for Fujii and Kihlstedt’s Vancouver International Jazz Festival performance this week.

"Every time we play together, we find something different, something new," says the pianist. "So we’re both really interested in playing together. And before the Vancouver concert we’re planning to record some new stuff in the Bay Area."

The project, destined for saxophonist John Zorn’s Tzadik label, will feature extramusical inspiration courtesy of Kihlstedt’s eye for contemporary art.

"Carla came to me with the idea that we have female artists’ work, paintings, to get some ideas from," Fujii explains. "So it’s not going to be just improvisation. It’s more like directed improvised music."

Not that it’s going to be entirely scripted. For this classically trained musician, the element of surprise is what keeps her coming back to improvisation.

"Recently, in Japan, I collaborated with a flamenco dancer," she notes. "Kind of a flamenco improviser, but she uses flamenco technique, which is very different from my background. And that made me have a new sound coming up from my inside. And with Carla, too, when I play with her, many times I play something I didn’t expect. Like, I play, but I’d never played that kind of stuff before. By myself, that probably would never happen, but collaborating with someone else who can touch my inside world, who can encourage me to do something new, these things come out easily."

Satoko Fujii and Carla Kihlstedt play the Roundhouse next Thursday (June 26).