Meg Okura / Meg Okura & The Pan Asian Chamber Jazz Ensemble
Jazz Road Creative Residencies Grant Recipient
Recipient Information
Location
Bronx, New York
Year of Award
2021
Grant or Fellowship
Jazz Road Creative Residencies Grant
Grant Amount
$40,000
About the Project
The Pan Asian Chamber Jazz Ensemble will perform and record music in conjunction with community conversations at Temple Israel, NY. A panel, moderated by an equity and inclusion strategist and using the experiential interactive platform Mentimeter will precede a 75 minute live/streamed concert.
Residency Location
New York, NY
About the Artist
The New York Times described Meg Okura's music as ""grandiloquent beauty that transitions easily from grooves to big cascades to buoyant swing.""
Jazz composer and violinist Meg Okura is the recipient of the 2018 Chamber Music America's New Jazz Works Program (funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation) and the 2020 Copland House Residency Awards. Since the Pan Asian Chamber Jazz Ensemble's founding in 2006, Okura has released six albums under her name. In 2016, she held a week-long residency at the Stone in New York City, performing and presenting 12 concerts with her ten different groups.
Okura's compositions have been performed by BMI/New York Jazz Orchestra, New York Symphonic Ensemble, Meetinghouse Jazz Orchestra, Sirius Quartet, and other jazz and chamber music groups. Okura's credit appears on over 100 albums/films/live videos, including David Bowie, Michael Brecker, Lee Konitz, Steve Swallow, Diane Reeves, Tom Harrell, Vince Giordano, Jeremy Pelt, Sam Newsome, and Grammy-nominated album by Emilio Solla y La Inestable de Brooklyn.
Her Pan Asian Chamber Jazz Ensemble has performed nationally and internationally, including Winter Jazz Fest, Dizzy's Club Coca Cola at Jazz At Lincoln Center, Blue Note New York, KL Jazz Festival (Malaysia), and Levitt Pavilion Los Angeles, and the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C.
She has received awards and grants from New Music USA, American Composers Forum/Jerome Foundation, South Arts/Jazz Road, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Meet the Composer/Metlife, Chamber Music America/Doris Duke Foundation, etc. She has been a finalist in USA Songwriting Competition, BMI Ball State Symphony Band Commission, BMI Foundation Charlie Parker Prize, Independent Music Award, American University Saxophone Composition Competition, and John Lennon Songwriting Contest.
Native of Tokyo, Okura toured Asia as the soloist and concertmaster of the Asian Youth Orchestra as a teen. She moved to the U.S. in 1992 and made her solo debut at Kennedy Center with the late Alexander Schneider's New York String Orchestra. She then earned B.M. and M.M. degrees from the Juilliard School as a classical violinist, only to make a difficult shift to becoming a jazz musician. She has appeared at Carnegie Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, The Barbican, Madison Square Garden, Village Vanguard, Blue Note Tokyo, Hollywood Bowl, and numerous festivals and concert halls worldwide.
In 2018, she placed No. 6 Jazz Violinist in the International Critics Polls