Toshihiro Akamatsu was born in the city of Matsuyama in Ehime Prefecture. The first musical instrument he ever put his hand on was the piano when he was 3 years old.Two years after his awakening to jazz music at age 11, he began studying vibraphone on his own.
Akamatsu was an elementary student when he saw Gary Burton playing on TV. (At that time, he naturally did not know who Burton was, or the name of "the musical instrument with glittering keys" that this maestro manipulated so beautifully with four mallets.)
When he turned 16, he started taking private lessons from Keiko Abe who was regarded as the foremost marimba player around then, and soon began playing jazz too while he was still in high school (as a student in the music department of Sakuyo High School in Okayama). He continued to pursue music during the university years from when he began performing in live houses. After graduating in 1980, he moved to Tokyo and formed with his own group.
The first turning point came in 1982 when he won the "Best Player Prize", "Judges' Special Prize" and "Guest Judge (George Duke) Prize" in the competition called "ANNEX 82" that also brought him the first ticket tomove under the spotlight.
The second turning point was when he met Gary Burton who came to Japan in 1985 to participate in an event called "Berklee in Tokyo".
Burton recognized Akamatsu's potential talent and opened his way to receive the scholarship to study at the Berklee College of Music in Boston in 1986.
During his years at Berklee, Akamatsu majored in vibes and composition, and played with many talented musicians-to-be's including Makoto Ozone. During his study, he won "Gary Burton Award"and "Professional Scholarship" and to eventually grad uate this institution in 1989 with an outstanding achievement that ranked him in the second place of all those in Jazz Composition Division.
After returning to Japan, he became a regular performer of Session '90 ~ '93 sponsored by NHK-FM. In 1994, he joined Terumasa Hino's group and worked actively innumerous studio sessions.
The next leap in his career can be attributed to the formation of his own unit called "The Next Door" in 1999. Tightly bound with the young members of this group, he keeps himself busy performing in Roppongi Pit Inn and appearing in various hot events including Yokohama Jazz Promenade.
And in November 2000, the group released CD under the title "Toshihiro Akamatsu Next Door - Birth of the Swift Jazz".
Hello Toshihiro, Thanks so much for the Add–and your friendship. We enjoyed your music very much. Thanks for sharing it with all of us. It's a pleasure having you among our friends! We've added two blogs about Umano, plus four more new compositions, making ten on our page. We hope you and your friends visit us and enjoy our music, too. We wake up every morning and play the music of the new MySpace friends who have arrived at our site during the night. It occurred to us that these friends (you are among them) are almost universally positive, whether they be novices or legends, and without regard to their station in life or the country they occupy. Although it's not an original thought, it also occurred to us that we couldn’t hold a verbal conversation with most of these friends, but we have bridged that gap by expressing our art honestly with each other. We all have been filling the world with our music and art, in the hope that our messages of love and human understanding will have an impact on the world at large. What a gift and what an opportunity we have received from this technology! ♫♫♫ Thom & Lorry Gambino ♫♫♫ New York, New York
Greetings Akamatsu-San ! Your music keeps beeing holidays for my ears . I hope to interest you for the following:
Imagine:
You are an North-African immigrant to Spain or a South-American trying to get into US who has not much more than a few suitcases, his ability to work hard, willing to pay with slavery and to do dirty work - that no inhabitant of the country you want to go to would even think of considering.
You already travelled a far way and left many good friends behind that you maybe never will see again.
You stumble out of the nearly falling apart bus or the smuggler boat, where you had to pay your income of a half year to that grim looking people with hearts of stone - just to take you aboard.
You are sighing gladly that you survived the travel and now take your first steps in your new home country.
And you are soon aware: You are disrespected, treated badly, your woman is seen as a kind of cheap prostitute, other people's children don't want to play with your children.
You are thinking of your former homecountry with feelings of sentimentality and you know there is no hope: you cannot go back...
The track is called "Spanish Immigrant". A spanish/orchestral/funky/trumpet track
with kind regards and special respect to your work Art
En fouillant dans l'oeuvre du célèbre poète / jazzman / écrivain / dandy / touche-à-tout de génie... Boris Vian, QuarZz a eu envie de reprendre plusieurs de ses chansons et textes où swinguent humour et poésie et de les réarranger à sa manière.
Amour, soif de vivre, dérision, des thèmes pleins d'actualité.
....
