Akira Miyazawa (宮沢昭) (December 6, 1927 in

Matsumoto Matsumoto (松本 or 松元, "base of the pine tree") may refer to: Places * Matsumoto, Nagano (松本市), a city ** Matsumoto Airport, an airport southwest of Matsumoto, Nagano * Matsumoto, Kagoshima (松元町), a former town now part of the c ...

– July 6, 2000 in Tokyo) was a Japanese

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...

saxophonist, clarinetist, and flautist. Miyazawa played as a teenager in

Japanese military The Japan Self-Defense Forces ( ja, 自衛隊, Jieitai; abbreviated JSDF), also informally known as the Japanese Armed Forces, are the unified ''de facto''Since Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution outlaws the formation of armed forces, th ...

bands during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, then embarked on a career in jazz music after the war. He worked extensively with

Toshiko Akiyoshi is a Japanese–American jazz pianist, composer, arranger, and bandleader. Akiyoshi received fourteen Grammy Award nominations and was the first woman to win Best Arranger and Composer awards in ''Down Beat'' magazine's annual Readers' Poll. ...

in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as with

Yasuo Arakawa Yasuo is a masculine Japanese given name. Possible writings Yasuo can be written using many different combinations of kanji characters. Here are some examples: *安雄, "tranquil, male" *安男, "tranquil, man" *安夫, "tranquil, husband" *安� ...

Hampton Hawes Hampton Barnett Hawes Jr. (November 13, 1928 – May 22, 1977) was an American jazz pianist. He was the author of the memoir ''Raise Up Off Me'', which won the Deems-Taylor Award for music writing in 1975. Early life Hampton Hawes was born on N ...

Hidehiko Matsumoto Hidehiko "Sleepy" Matsumoto (松本英彦) (October 12, 1926, Okayama – February 29, 2000, Tokyo) was a Japanese jazz saxophonist and bandleader. Matsumoto played bebop in Japan in the late 1940s with the group CB Nine, then joined The Six Jos� ...

Helen Merrill Helen Merrill (born Jelena Ana Milcetic; July 21, 1930) is an American jazz vocalist. Her first album, the eponymous 1954 recording ''Helen Merrill'' (with Clifford Brown), was an immediate success and associated her with the first generation ...

, Shotaro Moriyasu,

Masahiko Satoh is a Japanese jazz pianist, composer and arranger. Early life Satoh was born in Tokyo on 6 October 1941. His mother was Setsu and his father, who owned small businesses, was Yoshiaki Satoh. The house that his family moved into in 1944 contained ...

Masahiko Togashi was a Japanese jazz percussionist and composer. Togashi grew up in a musical household; his father was a double-bassist in a swing jazz ensemble, and Togashi learned violin and drums, playing the latter in his father's band. He worked with Sadao ...

Mal Waldron Malcolm Earl "Mal" Waldron (August 16, 1925 – December 2, 2002) was an American jazz pianist, composer, and arranger. He started playing professionally in New York in 1950, after graduating from college. In the following dozen years or so Wa ...

, and Sadao Watanabe. Miyazawa left jazz in the 1970s but returned in 1981 with the albums ''My Piccolo'' and ''On Green Dolphin Street''.

References

*"Akira Miyazawa". '' The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz''. 2nd edition, ed.

Barry Kernfeld Barry Dean Kernfeld (born August 11, 1950) is an American musicologist and jazz saxophonist who has researched and published extensively about the history of jazz and the biographies of its musicians. Education In 1968, Kernfeld enrolled at U ...

. {{DEFAULTSORT:Miyazawa, Akira Japanese jazz saxophonists Japanese jazz clarinetists Japanese jazz flautists 1927 births 2000 deaths 20th-century saxophonists Musicians from Nagano Prefecture People from Matsumoto, Nagano