Toshiko Akiyoshi (秋吉敏子 or 穐吉敏子, Akiyoshi Toshiko; born December 12, 1929) is a Japanese jazz pianist, composer, arranger, and bandleader.

Akiyoshi received fourteen Grammy Award nominations. She was the first woman to win Best Arranger and Composer awards in Down Beat magazine's annual Readers' Poll. In 1984, she was featured in the documentary Jazz Is My Native Language. In 1996, she wrote her autobiography, Life with Jazz. In 2007, she was named an NEA Jazz Master by the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts.

Biography

Toshiko Akiyoshi was born in Liaoyang, Manchuria, to a Japanese family. She was the youngest of four sisters. In 1945, after World War II ended, Akiyoshi’s family lost their home and returned to Japan. They settled in Beppu. A local record collector introduced her to jazz by playing a record of Teddy Wilson performing “Sweet Lorraine.” Akiyoshi loved the music and began studying jazz. In 1953, during a tour of Japan, pianist Oscar Peterson discovered her playing in a club on the Ginza. Peterson was impressed and convinced record producer Norman Granz to record her. In 1953, under Granz’s direction, she recorded her first album with Peterson’s rhythm section: Herb Ellis on guitar, Ray Brown on double bass, and J. C. Heard on drums. The album was released as Toshiko's Piano in the U.S. and Amazing Toshiko Akiyoshi in Japan.

Akiyoshi studied jazz at the Berklee School of Music in Boston. In 1955, she wrote a letter to Lawrence Berk, asking him to let her study at his school. After a year of arguing with the State Department and Japanese officials, Berk was allowed to accept Akiyoshi as a student. He gave her a full scholarship and sent her a plane ticket to Boston. In January 1956, she became the first Japanese student at Berklee. Soon after, she appeared as a contestant on the March 18, 1956, broadcast of the CBS television show What's My Line? In 1998, she was awarded an honorary doctorate of music from Berklee, which was then called the Berklee College of Music.

Akiyoshi faced challenges as a Japanese-born jazz musician in America. Some music fans saw her as something unusual rather than a talented musician, a Japanese girl playing jazz in America. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Akiyoshi said that some of her success was because people found her unusual. She explained, “In those days, a Japanese woman playing like Bud Powell was something very new. So all the press, the attention, wasn’t because I was authentic… It was because I was strange.” Despite being born in Manchuria, Akiyoshi considers herself Japanese. As of 2010, she had not obtained American citizenship.

Akiyoshi married saxophonist Charlie Mariano in 1959. The couple had a daughter, Michiru. They divorced in 1967 after forming several bands together. That same year, she met saxophonist Lew Tabackin, whom she married in 1969. Akiyoshi, Tabackin, and Michiru moved to Los Angeles in 1972. In March 1973, Akiyoshi and Tabackin formed a 16-piece big band made up of professional musicians. Akiyoshi composed and arranged music for the band, and Tabackin played tenor saxophone and flute as the band’s soloist. The band recorded its first album, Kogun, in 1974. The title, which means “one-man army,” was inspired by the story of a Japanese soldier who believed World War II was still being fought and remained loyal to the Emperor. Kogun was commercially successful in Japan and received praise from critics.

The couple moved to New York City in 1982 and formed the Toshiko Akiyoshi Jazz Orchestra featuring Lew Tabackin. Akiyoshi toured with smaller groups to raise money for her big band. Later, BMG continued to release her big band’s recordings in Japan but was doubtful about releasing them in the United States. Although Akiyoshi released several albums in the U.S. featuring her piano in solo and small group settings, many of her later big band albums were only released in Japan.

On December 29, 2003, her band played its final concert at Birdland in New York City, where it had performed regularly every Monday for more than seven years. Akiyoshi said she ended the group because she was frustrated by her inability to get American recording contracts for the big band. She also wanted to focus on her piano playing, which she had been distracted from by years of composing and arranging. She has said that although she rarely recorded as a solo pianist, that is her preferred format. On March 24, 2004, Warner Japan released the final recording of Akiyoshi’s big band. Titled Last Live in Blue Note Tokyo, the album was recorded on November 28–29, 2003.

Music

Akiyoshi's Japanese heritage is clearly shown in her music, making her compositions different from other jazz musicians. When Duke Ellington passed away in 1974, Nat Hentoff wrote in The Village Voice that Ellington's music showed his African heritage. Akiyoshi was inspired to explore her Japanese musical traditions. She used Japanese themes, harmonies, and instruments (kotsuzumi, kakko, utai, tsugaru shamisen) in her compositions. However, her music stayed within jazz, showing influences from Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, and Bud Powell.

A reviewer of the live album Road Time said that the music on Akiyoshi's big band albums showed "a clever use of music and orchestra that made her one of perhaps two or three composer-arrangers in jazz whose name could be compared with Duke Ellington, Eddie Sauter, and Gil Evans."

In 1999, Akiyoshi was asked by Kyudo Nakagawa, a Buddhist priest, to write a piece for his hometown of Hiroshima. He sent her photos of the damage caused by the nuclear bombing. Her first reaction was shock. She could not see how she could create music about the event. Later, she saw a picture of a young woman coming out of an underground shelter with a small smile on her face. Akiyoshi said this image helped her understand the message: hope. With this idea, she composed the three-part suite Hiroshima: Rising from the Abyss. The piece was first performed in Hiroshima on August 6, 2001, the 56th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. The Hiroshima suite was included on the 2002 album Hiroshima – Rising from the Abyss.

Awards and honors

• NEA Jazz Master, 2007
• Jazz Album of the Year: Long Yellow Road, Stereo Review, 1976
• Gold Record: Insights, Swing Journal
• Silver Record: Kogun, Salted Gingko Nuts, Four Seasons of Morita Village, Swing Journal
• Special Award: (50th Anniversary Concert in Japan), Swing Journal
• Down Beat magazine Readers' Poll winner: Arranger: 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1989, 1995; Big Band: 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982; Composer: 1980, 1981, 1982, 1986
• Down Beat magazine Critics' Poll winner: Jazz Album of the Year: 1978 (Insights); Arranger: 1979, 1982, 1990, 1995, 1996; Big Band: 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983; Composer: 1981, 1982
• Grammy Award nominations: Best Jazz Instrumental Performance – Big Band: 1976 (Long Yellow Road), 1977 (Road Time), 1978 (Insights), 1979 (Kogun), 1980 (Farewell), 1981 (Tanuki's Night Out), 1984 (Ten Gallon Shuffle), 1985 (March of the Tadpoles), 1992 (Carnegie Hall Concert), 1994 (Desert Lady / Fantasy); Best Arrangement on an Instrumental: 1981 (for "A Bit Byas'd"), 1983 (for "Remembering Bud"), 1985 (for "March of the Tadpoles"), 1994 (for "Bebop")
• Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette, 2004