In 1945, a young girl repatriating to war-shattered Beppu, Japan, heard a record of Teddy Wilson playing Sweet Lorraine at a local collector's home, and it altered her destiny. This episode follows Toshiko Akiyoshi from a Ginza club in 1953, where Oscar Peterson heard her and called Norman Granz, to the debut album Toshiko's Piano recorded with Peterson's own rhythm section, to the cold-call letter that won her a full scholarship as the first Japanese student at Berklee and a 1956 appearance on What's My Line.

We examine the tension between novelty and artistry in her early American press, the Nat Hentoff essay after Duke Ellington's death that pushed her to look inward, and the technical problems of blending microtonal Japanese instruments with a 12-tone jazz band. From the 16-piece orchestra she formed with Lew Tabackin and the 1974 album ...