Toshiko Akiyoshi Research Paper

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Incredibly Talented Asian Jazz Musicians in America From Duke Ellington to Oscar Peterson, jazz has always been American music. Just recently, jazz has shone a spotlight on an Asian man, Joey Alexander, the youngest of jazz musicians and a composer, who was nominated for a prestigious music award. Renowned jazz trumpeter, Wynton Marsalis invited Joey to play at Lincoln Center’s gala in 2014 after seeing him on YouTube. As the first of Indonesian descent, Joey has caused a sensation in the jazz world. On the other hand, Toshiko Akiyoshi is a talented jazz pianist from Japan who is considered one of the first Asian females to be a leader that has dominated men and faced and overcome many struggles. Jazz has always been seen as a male-dominated …show more content…

With her upper-class education, Toshiko’s musical education was always Western, and she fell in love and played the piano at age seven. After World War II ended, the Akiyoshi family lost their business and possessions, including their piano. So, at the age of 19, instead of going to medical school, Toshiko continued her dream to perform the piano by auditioning as the pianist in a dance hall with an army dance band. She auditioned by performing a Beethoven piano concerto for the manager and got the position right away. That day Akiyoshi’s music career began. Akiyoshi became exposed to American jazz music when a record collector played several albums for her; she immediately fell in love with that musical style. After that, she learned by copying jazz from recordings and composing her own style of jazz. Because she wanted to expand more into jazz music, she headed to Tokyo which was one of Japan’s biggest jazz be-bop scenes of the …show more content…

After Akiyoshi fell in love with jazz, she spent much time listening to the best artists of the time such as Bud Powell and many more because Powell is considered to be a strong influence in her career. Powell was the major contributor to de-bop music in the United States in the 1940s. Toshiko’s piano style developed, and for most of her career, Duke Ellington was her main inspiration. Toshiko’s compositional style, as the jazz journalist Gudrun Endress stated in jazz profiles when focusing profiles on jazz and its creators, said, “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.”. An example of her composition is on the album “Kogun”. Her arrangement sounds like an oriental and swing that lasts for seven minutes long. Also, in her music, she wanted to tell a story in using the Japanese element in the song, but it still has a root in bebop

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