Toshiko Akiyoshi: Traditionalist and Innovator [From the Archives]

There is a very simple reason for the re-posting of this feature and it is simply that the editorial staff at JazzProfiles wanted to view it again on these pages.

Blog owner prerogative?

© -  Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“I think the music in our library has the advantage in being all the work of just one writer. It has its own character, so that regardless of age, it sounds as though it could have been written today.”

- Toshiko Akiyoshi

Toshiko's compositions and imaginative charts are what sets this orchestra apart from others; she likes to paint vivid pictures with her scores. "My music is mostly programmatic," she explains. "Most of the big band writers were arrangers rather than composers, except for Ellington, of course — they played popular tunes and had a singer, and so on, but their music wasn't programmatic, it didn't tell a story. In my mind, it’s very important to tell a story. My music has to have a certain attitude, it must reflect my view of certain things — that's what I like to bring into the music I write — a point of view. That's the difference between a writer and an arranger. Duke was a writer, his music told stories."

-Toshiko Akiyoshi as told to Chris Albertson

“The signature features of Toshiko Akiyoshi's compositional style are unmistakable. First of all, there is the rootedness in bebop, secondly the amalgamation of big band jazz with Japanese elements of music and thirdly the ingenious use of the woodwind section.”

- Gudrun Endress

Noh, which dates back to the 14^th century, and Kabuki, which had its beginnings in the early 17^th century, are both very stylized forms of Japanese drama.

The slightest movement of the hand, the assumption of a particular pose, the timing and nature of a mere utterance, can all have profound significance.

The musical accompaniment to these plays is also of importance in underscoring mood and adding dimension to a story’s plot and character development.

Although I am by no means expert in either Noh or Kabuki drama, I have attended performances of each and, through the tutoring of my hosts, gained an appreciation for the fact that each has a tradition as a highly codified and regulated art form.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I made my first purchase of a recording by the Toshiko Akiyoshi Lew Tabackin Jazz Orchestra and heard elements of both Noh and Kabuki in the arrangements of the band’s music.

I mean, I’ve always known that Jazz was ecumenical in extent, influence and application, but what was on display in the music of the Toshiko Akiyoshi Lew Tabackin Jazz Orchestra was downright catholic in the all-inclusive and all-pervasive sense of that word.

As Len Lyons and Don Perlo explain in their Jazz Portraits: The Lives and Music of the Jazz Masters:

“Adopting Duke Ellington as her role model, Toshiko writes and arranges virtually everything for her sixteen-piece band. … Ducal pieces of mood, color and texture, and original techniques that synthesize Jazz with traditional Japanese instruments and themes [are employed]. ….

In 1972, Toshiko moved to Los Angeles with [her husband], Lew Tabackin, who as a member of Doc Severinson band, was being relocated to Hollywood as part of the move from NYC by Johnny Carson’s Tonight TV show. The following year they formed a big band out of local studio musicians. Many of Toshiko’s compositions are built around Tabackin’s flute and exciting Sonny Rollins-influenced tenor saxophone playing.

She once compared piano playing to black-and-white brush painting and big band music to painting with colors. Using the band as a laboratory, she matured rapidly as a composer. Bright tonal colors became one of her trademarks, others being a buoyant sense of swing and allusions to traditional Japanese music.” [pp.25-26]

In effect, Toshiko followed the admonition that is given as a challenge to every artist: “Use what you know as the basis for your creativity.”

Toshiko took aspects of the cultural traditions she grew up with, in this case, Noh and Kabuki drama, along with other traditional Japanese fables, parables and myths and incorporated them into the other mainstay of her life – Jazz.

She innovated within traditional Japanese drama and the tradition of big band Jazz essentially by merging elements of one with the other.

Blending these seemingly disparate elements, Toshiko created a series of elaborate and extended compositions with exotic titles such as Four Seasons of Morita Village, Hiroko’s Delight, Notorious Tourist from the East, Kogun, Since Perry, Yet Another Tear, Salted Gink Nuts, Tanuki’s Night Out, Tales of a Courtesan, Hiroshima Rising from the Abyss, Long Yellow Road, Suite for Koto and Jazz Orchestra, Drum Conference [a multi-part suite featuring Japanese Taiko drums], and After Mr. Teng.

For someone with a minimum amount of formal training in theory and composition, orchestration and arranging, Toshiko has produced a staggering body of compositions.

How this concept of combining East and West cultural elements evolved in her music is described, in part, in the following interview with Ian Carr which Toshiko and Lew gave for BBC Radio while appearing at the Brecon Jazz Festival in Wales, UK in 1995.

Ian: “Why do you work together so well?”

Toshiko [to Lew]: “You want to go first? [giggles]

Lew: “[laughing] No, you can go first.”

Toshiko: “I think there are two main reasons. The first is attitude. We approach playing Jazz very sincerely and try to be the best we can be on our instruments. Secondly, I would like to think that he respects my work and I certainly respect his playing so we don’t barge into each other’s business.”

Lew: “She doesn’t play the saxophone and I don’t write charts [big band arrangements].

Ian: “You have done some writing?”

Lew: “I’ve written some tunes, but I don’t do any arranging and she doesn’t play the saxophone and I don’t play the piano. We try to keep our specialties separate and try not to get in each other’s way.  If we both were writers, maybe we’d have this constant disagreement of whatever.  But we fulfill our own little spheres.

Ian: “How have you managed to keep such a consistently good band together? Have you got a regular weekly thing?”

Toshiko: “Unfortunately, we lost our regular Monday night place some years ago when it was closed by the city. But  I think the main reasons the band works so well together is that musicians need to belong to the band. Without their cooperation, a band like this wouldn’t exist. We don’t play Moonlight in Vermont, we don’t play One O’clock Jump or Take the ‘A’ Train. It appeals to a very limited audience because everything is original; something they haven’t heard before.

In this situation, musicians have to find the music worthy to the point that they are willing to make some sacrifices to make it work. We do rehearse on a frequent basis  and we are lucky that a lot of the same musicians have remained with us over the years.

Ian: “So maybe you got the luck you deserve which is maybe the real luck, of course.” But what is the work situation like in America for a band such as yours?”

Lew: “For a band like Toshiko’s, we don’t work that much. As she explained, it’s not a dance band. We are a concert band and we have our share of gigs, but we have to advise the musicians of schedules so that they hold the dates for us. Fortunately, we manage to have a very consistent band and the turn-over rate is very gradual.

Ian: “So you both are obviously working at other things all the time?”

Lou: “I’m on the road all the time.”

Ian: “Are you getting a lot of composing commissions, Toshiko?”

Toshiko: Yes, actually, I have one for next year [1996] for the San Francisco Jazz Festival. We are going to be a main feature there and they have commissioned me to write something new for that.

We just came back from a China tour which is very unusual. I think our band was probably the first ‘major, noteworthy’ one to be in China. It was very exciting.”

Ian: “How many dates did you do in China?”

Toshiko: “We just had two concerts, but they were for NHK Television. Some people may know that I was born in Manchuria which is in China today and we were there in May and June of this year.”

But this European tour is very exciting for me and this is our first time at Brecon. Actually, this is my first time in any part of Great Britain as a performer.”

Ian: “How were the audiences in China, then? Were they good?

Toshiko: “We did two. One place is Dalian [previously known as Darien] where I attended high school. In those days, Dalian was an area of high culture. Not so much today. Today, music and culture is the farthest things from their mind. It’s very difficult to make a living, living quarters are very poor. But they were very curious and they came.

They were a different type of audience for us then the one we had in Shengyang, which is the capital of the particular province in Manchuria. We played at the music academy there and ninety-five per cent of the audience were familiar with classical music and music was a part of their lives. So they were much more sophisticated and had a different reaction.

But even in Dalian, where there is very little knowledge about music, they still liked some things which goes to show that music can be a very universal language. They really liked the exciting saxophone exchanges or the drum solos. [Lew concurs with Toshiko’s audience description]”

Ian: “So tell me about Ascent Records?”

Toshiko: “That was our own record label which we had some time ago. It’s like the story about the mountain not coming to you. The recording company we were with wasn’t making it.

Low didn’t want to have anything to do with it, but I was young and I didn’t realize how much work was involved. Everything from designing covers to all the other decisions. Of course, Lew helped me a bit, but not too much [laughter from all].

You have to package each of the demo copies to send to the press, and all these little things have to be done.

So when Sony-Columbia came along in 1991 and recorded us at Carnegie Hall, I was ready to quit our own label and go with them.

I don’t think I could do that again. It took a tremendous amount of energy and unfortunately as you get older you lose energy and have limited time.”

Ian: “So are you staying with Sony?”

Toshiko: “We had Desert Lady Fantasy come out last year on the label, but this is sort of a one-at-a-time deal so I have no idea.

Ian: “Perhaps, I should ask you some things about your personal life, but before I do, let me just say that I really liked some of the Eastern elements in some of the music you’ve done as well as the Western elements; particularly in that long suite, Minamata.”

Toshiko: “Actually, the first long suite that we recorded was Kourakan, in 1974, and that really came about. There was Nat Hentoff’s “Memorial to Duke” in The Village Voice. We all knew, but sometimes it has to be pointed out as Nat did,  that the Duke was always proud of his race.

Until that moment, I had never thought about looking into my heritage and that sort of opened my eyes to the fact that I have a different heritage than most American Jazz players and I should use that as a positive rather than a negative quality.

And perhaps through my different heritage, I could return something to American Jazz history, something that has been very good to me and not just take it for granted.”

Ian: “I think it was a wonderful thing because some of your most beautiful sonorities have come out in that area of your writing.”

Toshiko: “Thank you. I think that it is one of my most important contributions, that look into and discover those things about myself.”

Ian: “You must have been the very first Japanese musician to get any kind of international exposure.”

Toshiko: “Yes, it’s true. In 1953, the impresario Norman Granz had a tour of Japan with Oscar Peterson.  He came to hear my play and he thought I was worthy of being recorded. He gave me his rhythm section and Norman recorded me which was the first time a Japanese Jazz musician had been recorded by an American record label.”

Ian: “What I want to know is how does a young Japanese child growing up in Manchuria, which was a disputed area at the time, taking classical piano lessons; how does she come to Jazz? It must have been after you left Manchuria?”

Toshiko: “I think I have always been a student and that I will always be one. When I was in the First Grade, I heard a Third Grade student play a piece by Mozart. And I thought, ‘I would love to play like that.’ And that’s how I started playing piano.

After the war, we all had to come back to Japan. My parents lost everything. So I took a job in a dance hall so I could be near a piano. And one day, a Japanese record collector came to me and he wanted me to listen to some records by American Jazz pianists. It was a revelation. I learned how to play Jazz a little by ear from listening to records.

After a while, American servicemen would come to listen to me, some of whom could play Jazz and they taught me some things. But I learned mostly by listening to records.

People often ask me who my earliest piano influence were, but in those days, it wasn’t just the piano players, it could be the drummer, too. I learned from listening to everybody.”

Ian: “But the thing is, when you came to America in 1956, you very soon got into the top echelon, performing with people like Charlie Mariano….”

Toshiko: “That was until 1959. But when I arrived in 1956, I was very fortunate that I got a job playing four nights a week at the club, Storyville. And also, many groups would stop by and I would get a chance sometimes to sit-in with them while they played the club.

Later, in 1957 when I played the Hickory House in New York [the bassist] Oscar Pettiford used to come almost every night to sit-in.  All of these things were to my benefit.”

Ian: “What about the long, professional relationship that you had with [alto saxophonist] Charlie Mariano; that must have been very beneficial, too?”

Toshiko: “Yes, I always admired his playing. Yet, strangely enough, during our marriage, I don’t think tat we ever played in the house together. I always liked to practice by myself, and sometimes he would complain about that. Also, although we are both dedicated musicians, our attitudes about focusing on the music life was a little bit different.”

Ian: “Do you and Lew played together in the house?”

Lew: “Not much. Every once in a while we’d make an attempt at a little Bach, or something. But I’m in my little world and she’s in hers. [laughter]  Fortunately, we have space in between. We have a big enough space: I’m in the basement and she’s two floors above.

We work separately and then when the band has something happening, we come together. It’s a very special combination.”

It is very special: there’s not another big band like The Toshiko Akiyoshi Jazz Orchestra featuring Lew Tabackin and I doubt that one like it will appear in Jazz ever again.

It’s one thing to have the idea of melding cultural opposites, it’s quite another thing to bring it off and to create artistic excellence in the process.

Hear for yourself the brilliance of Toshiko’s achievement in the following video tribute to Toshiko’s big band which has as it’s audio track, her original composition – Kogun – which features the use of traditional tsuzumi drums and chanting from Japanese Noh drama thus giving the composition what Leonard Feather called “… a kind of East-meets-West cross-pollination, or, idiomatic double exposure ….”

The Toshiko Akiyoshi Jazz Orchestra Featuring Lew Tabackin - "Desert Lady/Fantasy"

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“The band sounded so good that sometimes when I listen to the recordings I am touched by the performance. I think that’s the way it should be, you are supposed to record after you have spent a lot of time playing it, but in reality it's vice versa — you record first, then play, so I am very lucky that we had the opportunity to do it in the right order."

- Toshiko Akiyoshi commenting on Desert Lady/Fantasy

While listening to Toshiko Akiyoshi’s Big Band do their thing on Desert Lady/Fantasy [Sony SRCS7438], I thought I would write a feature about it for the blog.

And then I read these insert notes by Chris Albertson, contributing editor with Stereo Magazine, and I decided that I didn’t need to anymore as he had pretty much written what I wanted to say about the recording.

Chris’ notes offer insights into the musical attributes that make Toshiko’s big band so special. It also provides a commentary on what Toshiko had to go through to make this unique band a reality.

“Big bands entered the jazz arena in the twenties and kept stomping until they hit the top of the American music scene. The Big Band Era tasted roughly ten years and left an impact that continues to be felt, both directly and indirectly. The most successful orchestras had their own distinct sound and fiercely loyal following, but for every "name" band mere were dozens who stopped short of making the national scene. There was not a night when the airwaves were not filled with wondrous riffs and spirited solo statements from star sidemen, "brought to you live for your dancing and listening pleasure" from some hotel or ballroom.

Big band music was exciting and functional; one could dance to it, romance to it, and Glenn Miller even had them marching to it. The top bandleaders became glamorous figures who received movie star treatment from the press, were courted by politicians, and had young fans clamoring for autographs. Fans often behaved in very much the same frenzied manner as Beatles followers would a couple of decades later, and, as always, an older generation shook its head.

Not surprisingly, interest in the trendy mix of brass and reeds peaked and the Era fell victim to ever-shifting public taste, redirected lifestyles, and a post-war economy. But while the spotlight shifted away from them, the big bands never left the scene altogether; the most successful band leaders weathered the storm, and some were so firmly established that their orchestras continued even after their death — we call them ghost bands. The big bands left a rich legacy, however, for they were breeding grounds for the great soloists of the Swing Era, and there never was better training for individual jazz players.

The Toshiko Akiyoshi Jazz Orchestra owes a debt to the great orchestras of the past, but, as Ellington put it, "things ain't what they used to be.' While Toshiko's band features all the bells and whistles of its famous predecessors, it stomps and swings with a different purpose.

Since the sixties, waning public interest and shrunken budgets have made it increasingly difficult to keep an established band together, not to mention start a new one. In 1973, when Toshiko's orchestra started to take shape, such a venture was labeled foolhardy, at best. So why did she do it?

"It was more or less an accident,'' she explains. The thought first occurred to Toshiko in 1967. "Back then, I wrote five tunes for my Town Hall concert, and when I heard the band play them I thought well, that's what I would like to do; of course I didn't do it, for many good reasons, the main one being the economy — I was barely surviving.” Indirectly, those 1967 compositions led to the band's formation six years later. "We formed it because Lew, then a regular member of the 'Tonight Show orchestra, was very bored with the LA. jazz scene. He had heard the tunes I wrote for my Town Hall concert, back in 1967, and he thought it would be wonderful to have the guys get together and play those tunes — that's how it started.

We had some rehearsals and I heard some great ensemble playing, which inspired me, because I had never been involved with a big band before. So I thought that this might be a wonderful way for me to leave something behind, I could build a library. All these years, up to that point, I was so conditioned to believe that my music was quickly forgotten; my records disappeared fast and became collector's items, because they were so hard to get. I thought, if I dropped dead, no one was going to miss me."

Word of the band's rehearsals got out and almost created a demand. "It was and will always be the music that makes me keep the band going — we all did it for the sake of the music” Toshiko points out. "Fortunately, during the first ten years of the band, in California, I found that the musicians were very enthusiastic, and we would get together regularly, every Wednesday morning. No one expected to go out on the road, but people learned of the band by word of mouth, and they wanted to hear it — so you might say that it was kind of an organic thing, the band was organically grown. Most big bands start out as a business venture, but this one just happened — it was an extension of me, and if s very difficult for me to think of it in any other way."

During its first ten years, in California, the personnel remained fairly intact, but Toshiko finds it more difficult to keep her repertory company together since moving to New York in 1983. "The past four years or so have been more difficult, because of the economy,” she points out. "'I mean, tours are almost a thing of the past, even five-day tours; it's just isolated bookings, single concert dates. Especially here in New York where many musicians are in the same position that I was in 25 years ago, they're barely surviving. So its very difficult to hold a musician for one single concert. Some people think a big band is basically the book, and that you can just take your music anywhere and have it played by local musicians, but that is not how it works. In California, although we met for rehearsal every Wednesday, some of the musicians would look at the music and say that it was as if they were seeing it for the first time, because they had had so many other jobs since the last rehearsal."

Such difficulties belie the precision that is so much in evidence on these recordings. Toshiko explains: "We really lucked out by having a ten-day tour just before the recording. We played at Kimball's East in the San Francisco Bay area and we played these numbers every night, then we went into the studio the day after we came home to New York. The band sounded so good that sometimes when I listen to the recordings I am touched by the performance. I think that’s the way it should be, you are supposed to record after you have spent a lot of time playing it, but in reality it's vice versa — you record first, then play, so I am very lucky that we had the opportunity to do it in the right order."

Toshiko continues to tour as a pianist, with small groups of her own, as does Lew, but one has a feeling that the band's the thing and that they play on — often in separate corners of the world — to feed all that brass and reeds. Toshiko's compositions and imaginative charts are what sets this orchestra apart from others; she likes to paint vivid pictures with her scores.

"My music is mostly programmatic," she explains. "Most of the big band writers were arrangers rather than composers, except for Ellington, of course — they played popular tunes and had a singer, and so on, but their music wasn't programmatic, it didn't tell a story. In my mind, it is very important to tell a story. My music has to have a certain attitude, it must reflect my view of certain things — that's what I like to bring into the music I write — a point of view. That's the difference between a writer and an arranger. Duke was a writer, his music told stories."

"It does not tell a story," says Toshiko of Harlequin Tears, the set’s brightly bouncing opening number, "but I had a certain grand opera in mind when I wrote it." Lew Tabackin's tenor sax and Luis Bonilla' s trombone are featured.

"Lew has a particular thing about ballads,” says Toshiko. "Mainly it's Strayhom, Monk and Ellington, those are the kinds of tunes that he is especially fond of, but he also wrote the only programmatic piece we have in this album, Desert Lady"

Lew's inspiration for this composition — which he originally recorded with a quartet, in 1989 — came from a Japanese film about a woman who lives in a sand dune. He has described it as "a kind of narrative thing that conjures up a vision,” but Toshiko saw something else when she heard. "I thought it had a Near-Eastern feeling,” she says. "It made me think of Morocco or Pakistan, and it reminded me of a documentary film I had seen, about Northern Africa — this film had some Somalian ladies making really incredible sounds. So I turned it into Desert Lady-Fantasy."

Toshiko obtained a tape of the African women making the unusual vocal sounds that had so intrigued her, and wove it into her chart, just before Conrad Herwig's trombone solo — the effect is quite extraordinary. Besides the Somalian ladies and Herwig's trombone, Toshiko's fantasy extension to Desert Lady features Lew's lavishly rounded flute, and adds percussionist Daniel Ponce to the band.

If not programmatic, Toshiko's mellow, straight-ahead Hangin' Loose is certainly a functional piece. "We use it for relief," she explains. "It's a good number to follow up a heavier piece with." A popular number, Hangin' Loose has been in the band's repertory for several years; it was originally written for Lew, "basically to expose my low notes,” he explains. Here, flanked by two Tabackin tenor statements, are solos by trumpeter Joe Magnarelli, trombonist Herb Besson, and altoist Jerry Dodgion.

Hiroko's Delight is named after Hiroko Onoyama, assistant to Mr. Morita, the chairman of the Sony Corporation of America. "She is the one who opened the door at Sony in our behalf,” says Toshiko. "Without her efforts, our 21st anniversary concert (Carnegie Hall Concert— Columbia CK 48805)... would not have been recorded — she was the catalyst, so I thought I'd dedicate a tune to her.” The band's trumpet section is featured prominently on Hiroko's Delight the order of solos being John Eckert, Joe Magnarelli and Greg Gisbert; the tenor solo is by Walt Weiskopf.

“It's very difficult to write for Lew,” says Toshiko, “There was a time when it seemed like we were losing all the great tenor saxophonists, and when Ben Webster died, Lew wrote a very short ballad, 16 bars, called Yet Another Tear. I had that in mind when I asked him to write another such piece for himself to play in this album.” The result was Broken Dreams, a lovely, melancholic tune that features Lew's tenor throughout.

The set's final number is Bebop a tune written by Dizzy Gillespie, who once referred to it as "another tune I stole from myself." Toshiko decided to include it as a memorial to Dizzy, who passed away in 1993. Jim Snidero’s alto and Greg Gisbert's trumpet soar through Toshiko's well-oiled arrangement which has the brass and reed sections cooking up a storm that would have delighted the composer. "I worked with Dizzy several times,” she points out, "and his kind of music is what I was raised on. My orchestra is a concert band, like the one Dizzy had in the late forties, and by now I hope that people who hear my music can tell that it's mine.” Indeed they can.

The following video features Toshiko’s arrangement of Hiroko’s Delight with John Eckert doing the honors on trumpet along with Joe Magnarelli and Greg Gisbert, Walt Weiskopf on tenor sax and Terry Clark on drums.