Kei Akagi

Kei Akagi ( Japanese ケ イ 赤城 ; born March 16, 1953 in Sendai ) is a jazz musician (piano and keyboards) and university teacher from Japan and living in the United States .

biography

Born in Japan, Kei Akagi spent his childhood in Cleveland , Ohio , taking music lessons. His family then returned to Japan in his youth and he studied philosophy and music in Tokyo. After completing his studies, he moved back to the United States at the age of 22, initially as a philosophy student at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Akagi, however, abandoned an academic career at the age of 25 and worked from then on as a professional musician. As a sought-after sideman, he became known in particular through his collaboration with the band of Airto Moreira and Flora Purim from 1979 to 1985; he also played with Blue Mitchell , Art Pepper and Eddie Harris in the 1970s . In the 1980s with Joe Farrell , Allan Holdsworth , Jean-Luc Ponty , James Newton and Al Di Meola . Akagi played in the Miles Davis Band from 1989-91 ; from 1991 to 2000 he worked with Stanley Turrentine , 1994/95 with Sadao Watanabe .

Kei Akagi is active in the California jazz scene and is Chancellor Professor of Music at the University of California at Irvine (UCI).

Discographic notes

• Playroom (1991)
• Mirror Puzzle (1994)
• New Smiles & Traveled. (2000)

Literature / sources

• Bielefeld catalog 1988 & 2002
• Richard Cook , Brian Morton : The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings . 8th edition. Penguin, London 2006, ISBN 0-14-102327-9 .
• Leonard Feather , Ira Gitler : The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz. Oxford University Press, New York 1999, ISBN 0-19-532000-X .

Web links

• Website (Japanese)
• Biography on Billboard ( Memento from May 13, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
• Faculty biography at UCI
• Kei Akagi at Discogs (English)