Carnegie Hall, a Thirtieth-Anniversary Billing That Doubled as a Funeral Notice, and the First Hiroshima Suite Performance Outside Japan

On October 17, 2003, the Toshiko Akiyoshi Jazz Orchestra played Carnegie Hall's Isaac Stern Auditorium at 8 p.m., billed as its thirtieth-anniversary concert and, in the same breath, its farewell. The band had started in Los Angeles in 1973 as a studio-musician outfit built around Akiyoshi's writing and her husband Lew Tabackin's tenor and flute. The centerpiece was Hiroshima: Rising from the Abyss, the suite she wrote for the city after a Hiroshima priest asked her in 1999; it had premiered in Hiroshima in 2001, and this was its first performance outside Japan. Billy Taylor hosted, and the Korean flutist Won Jang-Hyun guested. Akiyoshi's stated reason for stopping was that she wanted to get back to playing piano rather than only writing for a band. The band lingered: it kept its Monday slot at Birdland until late December, and cut one last live album at Blue Note Tokyo in November.