Saxophone | 1950-2021

Hidefumi Toki was born in Kobe on February 1, 1950, enrolled at the Osaka College of Music and left to turn professional at sixteen, joining Isao Suzuki’s group before moving through Toshiyuki Miyama and New Herd in 1970 and Terumasa Hino’s Quintet from 1972. In 1975 he recorded his debut album for Three Blind Mice as TBM-46: “Toki,” a quartet session featuring Kazumi Watanabe on guitar, Nobuyoshi Ino on bass and Steve Jackson on drums, mixing two original compositions with readings of “When Sunny Gets Blue” and Ornette Coleman’s “Blues.” The album’s laidback, expressive alto and soprano saxophone playing has made it one of the most collected TBM releases of the mid-1970s period. In July 1978 he appeared on a Baystate Records session in New York with Tommy Flanagan’s Super Jazz Trio. He performed at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1979 with Naoya Matsuoka’s group. From the 1980s he balanced a leader career with extensive session work across jazz, fusion and J-pop, including a thirty-year partnership with singer Tatsuro Yamashita. His daughter is J-pop vocalist Asako Toki. Toki died in Tokyo on June 26, 2021, aged 71.