Last month, 86-year-old Toshiko Akiyoshi got her band back together at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall.
She’d gone solo, again, in 2003 (at age 74), to get reacquainted with her first love, the piano. It was a love affair that began 70 years ago.
Born in China to Japanese parents, Akiyoshi returned with her family to Japan following World War II, and soon discovered jazz. By the early ’50s, she was playing in clubs, where American pianist Oscar Peterson first heard her play. He was instrumental in getting Akiyoshi into the studio, where Peterson’s rhythm section backed her on her first recording session in 1953.
She moved to the U.S. in 1956, becoming the first Japanese student at the Berklee School of Music (now Berklee College of Music) in Boston.
Akiyoshi played in various combos in the ’60s, including a stint with Charles Mingus, at a time when female players, not to mention Japanese players, were rare. Discrimination came with the territory.
"In those days, 'Japanese play jazz, really?' And when it come to girl — 'Really, really?' kind of thing," she recently told NPR's Tom Vitale.
She persevered, and with husband and saxophonist Lew Tabackin, she put together a group of stellar musicians in the early 1970s, reimagining big-band jazz in the new decade, with a powerful woodwind section and the occasional Japanese flourish.
Grammy nominations, critical accolades and honors would follow. In 2007, she received a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master award, recognizing exceptional contributions to the advancement of jazz. Akiyoshi shares that honor with a who’s who of jazz, including Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and Ella Fitzgerald.
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