Miles Okazaki: The Complete Monk

In October of 2024, a concert film was made at The Jazz Gallery in NYC of Miles Okazaki playing the complete works of Thelonious Monk on solo guitar in a five-hour performance on a single night. Okazaki will revisit this idea at Big Ears, making a second complete journey through Monk’s music. This concert builds on the recording of the complete songbook that Okazaki began in 2017, Thelonious Monk’s centennial year. Upon its release in 2018, the 6 disc, 70 track album WORK received wide critical acclaim for its originality and audacity – Nate Chinen described it as “the six-string equivalent of a free solo climb up El Capitan.” The album landed on dozens of top ten lists for 2018, and Okazaki was voted the #1 rising star guitarist in the Downbeat Critic’s poll.

Miles Okazaki is a NYC-based guitarist originally from Port Townsend, a small seaside town in Washington State. His approach to the guitar is described by the New York Times as “utterly contemporary, free from the expectations of what it means to play a guitar in a group setting — not just in jazz, but any kind.” His sideman experience over the last two decades covers a broad spectrum, from standards to experimental music (Kenny Barron, John Zorn, Steve Coleman, Stanley Turrentine, Henry Threadgill, Miguel Zenon, Dan Weiss, Matt Mitchell, Jonathan Finlayson, Anthony Tidd, Jane Monheit, Patricia Brennan, Amir ElSaffar, Anna Webber, Darcy James Argue, and many others). He has released twelve albums of original compositions over the last 12 years on the Sunnyside, Pi, and Cygnus labels.