Miles Okazaki

My friend and mentor, Cyrus Pace, turned me onto this guy named Miles Okazaki. Cyrus went to school with him at the Manhattan School of Music. His debut album was called Mirror, and he has since followed up with his second album which follows in the footsteps of Mirror. The second album is entitled Generations. Okazaki is a guitarist and a composer. His composition stands above the guitar playing on his two albums. He is experimenting with musical arrangements that are too complex for me to describe here, although he shares everything on his website, www.milesokazaki.com . But the fact is that his style has resonated with me in a way that has been quite inspiring. When I first heard Mirror, I commented that it meant as much to me as John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. This was also the first album where I heard Chris Potter on sax. On his second album he brings in Miguel Zenon, David Binney and Christof Knoche on alto saxes. He brings in the best sax players! Anyway, how to describe Okazaki’s music? He challenges rhythms, often being polyrhythmic. The sax parts are jazz by nature. But the underlying score seems to build from almost a funk comp at times that will morph into a swing. It’s very hard to explain in words. I’m a huge fan of what Okazaki is doing. If you want to hear something different from what everyone else is doing (outside of somewhere in the clubs of downtown New York) then Okazaki is a nice place to start