NEA Jazz Master Toshiko Akiyoshi with Quartet featuring Lew Tabackin and AJO

also leading the Albuquerque Jazz Orchestra
under the direction of Bobby Shew

Sponsored by Eisbach Facial Plastic Surgery, PC

The Lensic Performing Arts Center • Santa Fe
This event is supported by NEA Jazz Masters Live, an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest.

Guest Emcee: Retired NEA Deputy Chairman, A.B. Spellman

NEA Jazz Master, Toshiko Akiyoshi is a Japanese American jazz pianist, composer, arranger and bandleader who, over the course of a six-decade career, has made a unique and vital contribution to the art of big band jazz. A major figure in jazz composition, she has received 14 Grammy nominations and holds the honor of being the first woman to win the Best Arranger and Best Composer awards in Down Beat magazine’s Readers Poll. Her music is distinctive for its textures and Japanese influence merged with a strong jazz base. In 1984, she was the subject of a documentary film entitled Jazz Is My Native Language and was named an NEA Jazz Master in 2007. Akiyoshi formed her first big band in the early 1970s in Los Angeles with her husband, saxophonist/flutist Lew Tabackin. They later relocated to New York City and re-formed the band, the Toshiko Akiyoshi Jazz Orchestra. In tonight’s jazz festival performance, Ms. Akiyoshi will perform with her quartet featuring Lew Tabackin, saxophone and flutes; Boris Koslov, bass; and Mark Taylor, drums; and will also direct the Albuquerque Jazz Orchestra performing her music.

Founded in 1982 by Pancho Romero, the 17-member Albuquerque Jazz  Orchestra (AJO) was directed by trombonist John Sanks until 2007 when award-winning trumpeter Bobby Shew took over the reins. The AJO has backed an impressive list of jazz and popular artists and features professional and semi-professional musicians, public school and university educators, and talented UNM students.

$40/$30/$25/$15. $5 discount Members & Students (No Member Passes)

Available in advance, by phone or in person, at the Outpost Performance Space 505-268-0044;

Lensic Box Office 505-988-1234; or on the web at www. TicketsSantaFe.org