Toshiko Akiyoshi - Music

Music

Akiyoshi's music is distinctive for its textures and for its Japanese influence. When Duke Ellington died in 1974, Nat Hentoff wrote in The Village Voice about how Ellington's music reflected his African heritage. Upon reading this, Akiyoshi was inspired to investigate her own Japanese musical heritage. From that point on, she began composing with Japanese themes, Japanese harmonies, and even Japanese instruments (e.g. kotsuzumi, kakko, utai, tsugaru shamisen, etc.) Her music remained planted firmly in jazz, however, reflecting influences including those of Ellington, Charles Mingus, and Bud Powell. Akiyoshi has spoken of approaching her arrangements vertically, voicing each chord individually, which contrasts with the philosophy advocated by Herb Pomeroy, Bob Florence, and others, of writing phrases in a linear fashion. Akiyoshi often uses five-part harmony in her voicings, which yields a bigger sound from her horn section.

One reviewer of the live LP Road Time said the music on her big band albums demonstrates

"...a level of compositional and orchestral ingenuity that made her one of perhaps two or three composer-arrangers in jazz whose name could seriously be mentioned in the company of Duke Ellington, Eddie Sauter and Gil Evans."

In 1999, Akiyoshi was approached by a Buddhist priest named Nakagawa. He asked her if she would consider writing a piece for his hometown, Hiroshima. He sent her some photos depicting the aftermath of the nuclear bombing. Her initial reaction was horror. She could not see how she could compose anything to address the event. Finally she found a picture of a young woman, emerging from an underground shelter with a faint smile on her face. Akiyoshi said that upon seeing this picture, she understood the message: hope. With that message in mind, she composed the three-part suite Hiroshima: Rising From the Abyss. The piece was premiered in Hiroshima on August 6, 2001, the 56th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. The Hiroshima suite was featured on a 2002 CD release bearing the same title, Hiroshima - Rising From The Abyss.