Toshiko Akiyoshi grew up loving and learning classical music — that is, until age 16 when her parents returned to their native Japan at the end of World War II. Unbeknownst to the young musician at the time, this move would alter a career path that, more than 60 years later, brings her trio to Blues Alley this week. “I didn’t start playing jazz until World War II,” said the soft-spoken Akiyoshi. “I played at a jazz hall in Japan when I was 16 and that’s when I discovered it.”
And she never looked back.
| Onstage |
| Toshiko Akiyoshi Trio |
| » Where: Blues Alley Jazz and Supper Club, 1073 Wisconsin Ave. NW |
| » When: 8 and 10 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday |
| » Info: $25; 202-337-4141; bluesalley.com |
While on tour in Japan with the Norman Granz “Jazz at the Philharmonic,” pianist Oscar Peterson took note of the teenager and before long Akiyoshi was recording for Granz. Soon after that “gig,” she headed to the United States to study at the Berklee College of Music, which led to an interest in composing and arranging.
In time, Akiyoshi and her husband, saxophonist and flutist Lew Tabackin, formed the highly successful, big band that is now known world-wide as the Toshiko Akiyoshi Jazz Orchestra featuring Lew Tabackin. The band’s recordings (her own compositions) would go on to receive 14 Grammy Award nominations. In 2002, she retired the big band to return solely to the piano. She will go out on the road as a trio. At times, her husband joins her.
For her Blues Alley gigs on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, she will be backed by her long-time colleagues, bass player Paul Gill and drummer Shinnosuke Takahashi.
“I’ll play half of my own music [and] hopefully the audiences will know some of it,” Akiyoshi continued with bona fide modesty for a body of work (more than 100 original songs) that, in 1986, earned her New York’s Liberty Award and a video release of a 1993 big band concert, “Strive for Jive.”
She maintains that small clubs are the best places for the standard tunes she will also perform, such as songs by Duke Ellington, since she perceives herself as “basically a bebopper like the Duke.”
“I hope that when people come to hear my music they will go home with something that touches their hearts … something that they can think about,” she said.
