Jazz Couple Akiyoshi, Tabackin Share Stage

The most exciting jazz is often the product of inspired bandstand communication, forged by decades of shared experience.

That's the kind of relationship that will be on display when pianist/composer Toshiko Akiyoshi opens a two-night stand at Yoshi's on Monday with her quartet, featuring bassist Paul Gill, drummer Mark Taylor, and her husband, the brilliant tenor saxophonist and flutist Lew Tabackin.

Akiyoshi and Tabackin have been creative partners for almost four decades, since they formed a quartet together in 1968. They were already respected players with rising reputations -- she had performed widely with Charlie Mingus and he with Elvin Jones and Donald Byrd -- but it was working as a team that they became jazz giants.

When Tabackin's gig in Doc Severinsen's Tonight Show Orchestra moved to Los Angeles in 1972, the couple followed and relocated to the West Coast. Before long, they had founded a big band stocked with top L.A. studio players that became a vehicle for Akiyoshi's extraordinary compositions and arrangements blending Japanese influences with orchestral bebop. The groundbreaking sound was documented on a series of classic albums for RCA, such as “Long Yellow Road," “Tales of a Courtesan" and “Road Time" (albums that are criminally out of print in the United States). In the early 1980s, they moved back to New York and re-created the big band, though instead of filling it with jazz veterans, they made it a proving ground for talented young players.

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