Toshiko Akiyoshi

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Toshiko Akiyoshi (1978)

Toshiko Akiyoshi ( Japanese 穐 吉 敏 子 or 秋 吉 敏 子 ), or 龝 吉 敏 子 , Akiyoshi Toshiko ; * December 12, 1929 in Liaoyang (sometimes called Dalian , China as the place of birth) is a Japanese jazz pianist , composer, arranger and big band leader.

Life

She was born in Manchuria, where the family emigrated from Japan. They returned to Japan after the end of World War II. She learned to play the piano at the age of seven and at the age of 16 played in bars for American soldiers in Beppu . After listening to Teddy Wilson on records, she became interested in jazz and learned to improvise by listening to the records. In 1952 she formed her own band, u. a. with Sadao Watanabe . On his tour of Japan in 1952, she fell on Oscar Peterson , who recommended her to Norman Granz . This in turn brought out their first album Toshiko's Piano in 1953 with the then Oscar Peterson Rhythm Section ( JC Heard (drums), Ray Brown and Herb Ellis (guitar)).

Toshiko Akiyoshi 1955

In 1955 she received a scholarship to study at Berklee College of Music in Boston . At the same time she played in Storyville Club of George Wein , noted with Roy Haynes , Ed Thigpen , Paul Chambers and Oscar Pettiford on (which is also sometimes at their performances in Hickory House starred in New York) and played in 1956 at the Newport Jazz Festival . In her senior year 1959 she married the saxophonist Charlie Mariano , with whom she played in several joint bands (Toshiko-Mariano Quartet) until their divorce in 1967. In 1962 she played with Charles Mingus (Town Hall Concert) and then went to Japan for three years. After returning to New York City in 1965 , she worked intermittently in a radio series.

In 1969 she married the saxophonist and flautist Lew Tabackin (* 1940 in Philadelphia ), with whom she founded a quartet and moved to Los Angeles in 1972 , when Tabackin's employer, the television Tonight Show , moved there. In 1973 they both founded a big band made up of studio musicians. a. with Peter Donald , Gary Foster , Bobby Shew and Britt Woodman , for whom Akiyoshi arranged and composed. Her first album, Kogun , was released in 1974. The name means “one-man army” and alludes to the Japanese soldiers who stayed in the jungle decades after the war. At the same time, according to her own words, it was the first of her compositions that tried to incorporate influences from Japanese music and, in contrast to Western music, a "horizontal" instead of vertical structure. The 1976 album Insights was voted Album of the Year by Down Beat in 1978 ; the big band had success with both critics and audiences. In 1982 they both moved to New York City, where the band was re-established under the name Toshiko Akiyoshi Jazz Orchestra .

As an arranger, she prefers, in her own words, “small groups with lots of colors”, to which the use of multiple instrumentalists among the woodwinds like Frank Wess fits. She also uses a five-part (instead of the usual four-part) saxophone setting and sees a key position in the drummer of her big band, who, if necessary, has to establish the connection between brass and saxophones.

The band played regularly in Birdland , but was disbanded by Akiyoshi in 2003 because they could not get big band record deals in the United States. But she released many records in small groups as a pianist, e.g. B. Interlude from 1987. As a composer, besides bebop roots , she brought classical concert forms and consciously many Japanese influences. In 1999 her big band played a suite for Duke Ellington's 100th birthday at the Monterey Jazz Festival , and in 2001 she composed a suite Hiroshima - rising from the abyss , which premiered on the anniversary of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima . In December 2006 she was able to gather a large number of her former big band members again for a concert on the occasion of her 60th stage anniversary in Japan.

Toshiko Akiyoshi conducts her big band in 1981, Monterey Jazz Festival

In 2007 she recorded her drum conference (actually written for Japanese drummers) and her Let freedom swing (based on texts by Eleanor Roosevelt ), written for the Lincoln Center , with the SWR Bigband (double CD Let Freedom Swing , Hänssler Classic).

She and Charlie Mariano have a daughter, Monday Michiru (born 1963), who works as a singer and actress.

In the 1980s she was a multiple winner of down beat critic polls for big bands, composers and arrangers, and was nominated 14 times for a Grammy in the big band category. She is considered one of the leading jazz composers and arrangers.

In 1984 a documentary was made about them ( Jazz is my native language ). In 2007 she received the NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship . She was also honored with high prices in Japan. In 1986 she received the Liberty Award from the City of New York.

Discography

literature

  • Akiyoshi Life with Jazz , Iwanami Shinsho, 1996 (autobiography, in Japanese)
  • Linda Dahl: Stormy Weather. The Music and Lives of a Century of Jazzwomen. London 1984, ISBN 0-7043-2477-6
  • Len Lyons The great Jazz pianists , da capo, 1983
  • Gudrun Endress Jazz Podium. Musicians about themselves , DVA 1980, pp. 174-181
  • Gudrun Endress, Interview, Jazz Podium 2008, Issue 4

Web links

Commons : Toshiko Akiyoshi  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Interview, Jazz Podium, 2008. She also mentions that John Lewis treated the piece at Harvard as an example of the influence of world music on jazz.
  2. ↑ Interview, Jazz Podium 2008
personal data
SURNAME Akiyoshi, Toshiko
ALTERNATIVE NAMES 穐 吉 敏 子 (Japanese); 龝 吉 敏 子 (Japanese)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Japanese jazz pianist and big band leader
DATE OF BIRTH December 12, 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH Liaoyang , China