Toshiko Akiyoshi

[clandy44]

Article from today's Wall Street Journal:

A Japanese Jazz Musician Tackles

The Daunting Subject of Hiroshima

By NAT HENTOFF

In the early 1950s, jazz impresario Norman Granz, returning from a concert tour of Japan, told me of a recording he had made in Tokyo of a 23-year-old pianist, Toshiko Akiyoshi. Oscar Peterson had heard her in a coffee shop and alerted Granz.

When she came to Boston in 1956 to study at the Berklee School of Music, I heard Toshiko often. Because she was a fluently secure melodic swinger, more experienced jazzmen welcomed her on gigs. Immersed in jazz since she was a teenager, her dream of being where it all started, she told me, had come true.

In the early 1960s, she co-led a combo with her then-husband, alto saxophonist Charlie Mariano, and I recorded her during my short tenure as an A&R man for Candid Records. Jazz was her natural language.

Toshiko went on to the demanding graduate school of Charles Mingus's orchestra; and no longer married to Charlie Mariano, she formed an enduring musical and life partnership with the unaccountably underrated tenor saxophonist and flutist Lew Tabackin. A self-challenger, like Toshiko, he too never stops evolving. In Los Angeles in 1973, she formed with him an intriguing orchestra that will celebrate its 30th anniversary at a Carnegie Hall concert on Oct. 17.

During all those years, Toshiko had never thought about interweaving Japanese music with her jazz life. What persuaded her to learn more about her roots was -- to my surprise when she said this in a July 2003 Down Beat interview -- an article I had written in the Village Voice when Duke Ellington died. He had often told me that what drove him as a composer and orchestra leader was to tell the history of his people in America, embedded in the black musical and life experiences of the centuries that preceded him.

"Reading that triggered me," she told Michael Bourne in Down Beat. "I thought that should be my job -- to employ some of my heritage, to put Japanese culture into jazz."

In a number of her compositions -- such as "Drum Conference," commissioned by, and performed at, Jazz at Lincoln Center this year -- she has been doing that job with characteristically singular inventiveness and a sure sense of textural dynamics that make her orchestra the most subtly dramatic in present-day jazz.

The climax so far of Toshiko's bringing her heritage into her jazz life is "Hiroshima -- Rising From the Abyss." First performed, and recorded, at Hiroshima on Aug. 24, 2001, it has now been released in this country on the True Life label (available at Amazon.com and many record stores).

As she told me, Toshiko had never thought of writing music about the horrifying devastation inflicted on the people of Hiroshima by this country on Aug. 6, 1945, when she was 15. "But at that time," she told writer Michael Bourne, "people tried to avoid speaking about it. Even the victims." In 1999, however, a Buddhist priest, Nakagawa, asked her to write music memorializing that fateful day in his hometown. He sent her photographs taken three days after the bomb. In her notes to the American release of "Beyond the Abyss," she writes that the pictures were so horrifying that she couldn't imagine what music she could bring to them.

"But," Toshiko continues, "one photo caught me eye. It was a young woman who came out of a bomb shelter looking at the sky, smiling a little with beautiful eyes full of hope." Seeing those eyes convinced Toshiko she could find in herself the music to honor, among the others, that young woman. Toshiko quotes the Dalai Lama: "We human beings cannot live without hope."

On the True Life CD, "From the Abyss" is the centerpiece. There are three sections of this memorial work: "Futility-Tragedy," "Survivor Tales" and "Hope." The entire set's first track, before the main composition, is "Long Yellow Road," and the last track, "Wishing Peace," has so moving a flute solo by Lew Tabackin that, Toshiko tells me, "tears come to my eyes when we perform it."

The most haunting, deeply reverberating section, "Survivor Tales," has a Hiroshima high-school student, Ryoko Shigemori, reading from a eyewitness account of the deaths and disfigurements, the "Mother's Diaries" from the Hiroshima Memorial Museum. Along with the reader, commenting on these tales is Wong Jang-Hyun, a master of traditional Korean flute.

The high-school student reads: "There was a rumor we would not have vegetation for 75 years. . . But here, trees are growing, grass is greener than ever . . . This is our message to the world from Hiroshima . . . No nuclear and atomic weapons, and peace on earth."

The 30th anniversary concert of Toshiko Akiyoshi's orchestra on Oct. 17 at Carnegie Hall will include a performance of "Beyond the Abyss" with Wong Jang-Hyun, together with masters of traditional Japanese drums. It will be the orchestra's final appearance. "I'm 73 now," Toshiko told me. "I started as a pianist, and I believe I can play better, that I can improve myself. So I will go back to the piano with a small group."

Over half a century, Toshiko, in her music and in her life, has exemplified the resilient life force of jazz, and of the message of hope from Hiroshima in "Survivor Tales."

[Free For All]

Have you heard this one yet, clandy44? How is it? How's the recording quality?

Any input is greatly appreciated.

[robviti]

"Hiroshima - Rising From the Abyss" might not be Toshiko's best recording, but fans of her orchestra should definately get it. I found the title track to be quite moving, although some might not fully appreciate the "Survivor Tales" section spoken in Japanese.

What upsets me about Hentoff's article is news that the Akiyoshi orchestra will disband after the October 17th show at Carnegie Hall! This is my favorite big band jazz , and I hate the idea of the orchestra breaking up. Coincidentally, I'm going to NYC to see them a week from Monday at Birdland. I'll have to look into returning for the farewell performace in October. BTW, some of Toshiko's big band recordings of the 70's and 80's were recently remastered and reissued in Japan. I'm also going to get a copy of her performance video "Strive for Jive."

[jazzbo]

I have a Japanese version of this on cd, and it is a bit more Ellington/Strayhornesque than some of her works, it's very good and the sound is very good as well.

[Out2Lunch]

About 10 of her big band recordings on RCA/BMG have recently be remastered and re-released in Japan. They were available from Dusty Groove and I bought some of them through Mr Tanno at Early Records.

[Christiern]

I have not listeed to the CD yet, but Toshiko showed me a video of what I presume to be the same performance. It was very moving and I give it my highest (albeit somewhat biased ) recommendation.

Edited August 23, 2003 by Christiern