By Jaclyn Breeze –
Toshiko Akiyoshi is a pianist and composer born in China to a Japanese family in 1929. When she was a teenager, her family moved back to Japan, where a local record collector introduced her to jazz. She immediately decided that was what she wanted to study. When she was in her early 20s, pianist Oscar Peterson was on tour in Japan and heard her playing in a club. He convinced his record producer to record her as well. Soon after she came to Boston to study at the Berklee School of Music. Toshiko was the first Japanese student to enroll there. In 1998, the school awarded her an honorary doctorate. She has also earned 14 Grammy nominations, won the US’s National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master, and the Order of the Rising Sun for exceptional service to Japan, among many other awards.
Toshiko is known for being one of the pioneers of women in jazz in Asia. She helped popularize jazz in Japan, was one of the first Asian band leaders, and was the first woman big band composer to win the Downbeat Reader’s Poll. She is also known for incorporating elements of Japanese folk music into her big band compositions. She is currently 94 years old and still actively touring!
Listen to some of her work here:
Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise
Here is a map and flag of Japan, where Toshiko’s family is from. Find out the colors of the Japanese flag to color it in!
