Toshiko Akiyoshi Big Band-"Long Yellow Road" & "Strive for Jive"

Toshiko Akiyoshi led fantastic big bands for several decades (the band was Down Beat magazine's critics' choice as best big group several times in the late 70's and early 80's)-in recent years she's stuck with smaller aggregations that feature her own excellent Bud Powell-ish solo work on piano.

Her chief soloist with the big band was husband Lew Tabackin, a tenor saxist and flutist, who is yet another jazz great hailing from Philadelphia. Toshiko did pretty much all the writing herself, which ranges from robust swing to Japanese delicacy.

She is, undoubtedly, one of the most important women in jazz history, and the music's greatest female writer, with the possible exception of Mary Lou Williams.


You may wonder why I always give jazz clips a "pop culture" label. This may even offend the more easily offended. The truth is that jazz occupies an odd middle ground between "art music" and more popular forms. Or rather, at its best, it is art music, that also has a certain degree of popular appeal. Music that is art for art's sake, and lacks that appeal, to me is rather pointless.

I maintain that big group jazz, with proper promotion, could be far more broadly popular than it is today, as thousands of high school and college kids are playing this music, and loving it. I also maintain that no music in the world better combines fun with high-level musicianship.



UPDATE-Let's also include "Strive for Jive", which appears to be from the same concert.