What Was Akiyoshi's Accomplishments

Her struggle to get recognized and respected as a musician was not an easy path for Akiyoshi. Seen as an accomplished jazz composer, starting with her Granz-recording, Toshiko began to realize that people saw her as an outsider to American jazz because she was both Japanese and a woman. These two categories were considered second class no matter what nationality or race. In 1959, after she left Berklee, she made her own way as a musician, composer, and arranger and thought that audiences were seeing her just like other musicians, no matter what her gender was, but audiences did not agree with her ideal view.
Even though Akiyoshi had difficult times in her career, in 1950, she met Charlie Mariano, who was a saxophonist who developed a strong
For about a year, she earned a living by playing in clubs and lounges. In line with her ideal goal, in the year of 1967, she performed in Town Hall which turned into a critical success. Akiyoshi encountered some financial issues of rehearsing and performing with a big band because big bands had not been in their prime for two decades yet by then which limited Akiyoshi’s options in finding capable performers. This turmoil almost caused Toshiko to quit music entirely until she met Lew Tabackin, her second husband. Lew realized that Akiyoshi could make major contributions to the genre, and he played a major role in supporting her composing and pushing ahead with the big
Noh creates such a great sound with such a sense of time and space. Akiyoshi felt she could utilize it well in conjunction with the traditional western big band swing. So, the listeners could hear the unique sounds of the Japanese instruments, because they are blended in with the regular jazz instruments to create a twist of a new kind of jazz. For example, in “Kogun” such an arrangement as this that is approximately seven minutes long is scored as “Oriental/Swing.” The piece starts off with a tsuzumi drummer “uttering a throaty, guttural cry whose quavering tone creates an atmosphere of urgency and a sense of distant sorrow.” The glissandos on this page represent the imitation that the instruments try to copy from the tzuzumi drummer’s throaty cry that is carried throughout the piece. Akiyoshi employs traditional Japanese folk song elements and instruments in her work, such as the sound of tzuzumi drummers. At least since the 1980s, when she relocated to New York after achieving an international reputation for her work with a large orchestra on the West Coast, she has performed innovative jazz compositions in clubs and concert halls and produced a series of acclaimed