MEG OKURA

Praised by The New York Times for music of “grandiloquent beauty that transitions easily from grooves to big cascades to buoyant swing,” Tokyo-born, New York-based composer and violinist Meg Okura has created a singular body of work at the intersection of jazz, classical and chamber music, improvisation, and musical traditions from around the world.

The 2025–26 season marks one of the most expansive periods of Okura’s career. Her Pan Asian Chamber Jazz Ensemble (PACJE) celebrated its 20th anniversary with Isaiah, the ensemble’s fifth album, released in February 2026 on Adhyâropa Records and produced by Remy Le Boeuf. In November 2025, she premiered Shaon Overture (The Clock Overture), commissioned by the 68-piece Symphonic Jazz Orchestra after Okura received its George Duke Commissioning Prize. In 2026, she was recognized in the DownBeat International Critics Poll in multiple categories, including Violin, Large Ensemble, and Composer.

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That same year brought several new directions. Okura completed an Asian Cultural Council Fellowship in Vietnam, undertaking field research into traditional and Indigenous musical practices; released Uncommon Tones: Live at The Stone, a trio recording with pianist Angelica Sanchez and soprano saxophonist Sam Newsome; and continued performing and composing with the AdaMa Quartet, an unusual chamber ensemble of clarinet, bass clarinet, violin, and cello that has performed internationally.

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A major focus of Okura’s current work is the music and legacy of Michael Brecker, with whom she performed as a member of his groundbreaking 15-piece Quindectet. In 2026, with the support of the Brecker family and collaborators associated with Brecker’s legacy, Okura began directing a new incarnation of the Michael Brecker Quindectet, restoring its repertoire and bringing the ensemble’s distinctive orchestral conception to a new generation. The ensemble appears at Birdland on October 6, 2026, featuring tenor saxophonist Donny McCaslin, with Okura serving as Artistic and Musical Director.

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FROM CLASSICAL VIOLINIST TO COMPOSER

An acclaimed classical violinist from an early age, Okura began her professional career performing internationally as a soloist and concertmaster, including a Kennedy Center debut, before expanding her work into improvisation, jazz, composition, and arranging.

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Born in Tokyo, she trained intensively as a classical violinist before moving to New York to attend The Juilliard School, where she earned both bachelor's and master's degrees in violin performance. Although she never formally studied jazz or composition in an academic program, her career increasingly moved beyond the traditional boundaries of classical violin performance.

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Much of that education instead happened on the bandstand.

Okura has performed and recorded with artists including Michael Brecker, Lee Konitz, Steve Swallow, Tom Harrell, David Bowie, and many leading improvisers and composers working across musical traditions. Working alongside composer-arrangers including Gil Goldstein and Steve Swallow gave her a particularly close view of jazz composition from inside the ensemble rather than from the classroom.

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Her chamber-music experience was equally formative. She performed with the Sirius Quartet and Scorchio Quartet, ensembles devoted to contemporary and cross-genre projects, while simultaneously developing as an improviser. For more than 25 years she has also performed with Pharaoh’s Daughter, the pioneering Jewish/world-music ensemble.

She received a Grammy nomination as a violinist on Argentinian jazz composer Emilio Solla’s Second Half.

Okura also leads a Ryuichi Sakamoto Tribute project reflecting her longstanding engagement with Sakamoto’s music. The project was presented in a sold-out performance at Winter Jazzfest at Roulette.

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PAN ASIAN CHAMBER JAZZ ENSEMBLE

Founded by Okura in 2006, the Pan Asian Chamber Jazz Ensemble has been her principal compositional laboratory for two decades.

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Combining improvisers with an orchestral sensibility uncommon in conventional jazz ensembles, PACJE has appeared at Birdland, Blue Note, the Knitting Factory, Winter Jazzfest, and concert venues and festivals internationally, from Japan to Kuala Lumpur.

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Its repertoire reflects Okura’s evolving relationship to culture, identity, orchestration, and improvisation. Works include Rice Country, written during her residency at Copland House, and Jubberish, commissioned by Chamber Music America.

The ensemble’s recordings—Meg Okura’s Pan Asian Chamber Jazz Ensemble (2006), Naima (2010), Music of Ryuichi Sakamoto (2013), IMA IMA (2018), and Isaiah (2026)—document two decades of that evolution.

The release performance for IMA IMA at Dizzy’s Club at Jazz at Lincoln Center was selected as a New York Times Editor’s Pick, while the album was named among All About Jazz’s Best Releases of the Year.

Released in February 2026, Isaiah features guest appearances by Randy Brecker, Brian Marsella, Anne Drummond, and producer Remy Le Boeuf. The album represents the culmination of PACJE’s first twenty years while pointing toward Okura’s increasingly orchestral approach to jazz composition.

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COMPOSER

Okura’s music has increasingly reached beyond the ensembles she leads.

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Her chamber composition Phantasmagoria has been presented at the Grand Teton Music Festival, Florida State University Festival of New Music, and LunART Festival and was recorded by clarinetist Tasha Warren and cellist Dave Eggar on the Grammy-nominated album Ourself Behind Ourself, Concealed.

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Her big-band work Silent Screams: An Anthem for the Unheard, commissioned by the International Society of Jazz Arrangers & Composers (ISJAC), was premiered at Vanderbilt University and subsequently performed in New York by the BMI/New York Jazz Orchestra and the Meeting House Jazz Orchestra.

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In 2025, Okura moved onto the largest compositional canvas of her career with Shaon Overture (The Clock Overture). Commissioned after she received the George Duke Commissioning Prize, the work was written for the 68-piece Symphonic Jazz Orchestra and premiered in November 2025.

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The scale of the work brought together strands that had developed throughout her career: the orchestral palette of her classical training, the rhythmic and harmonic language of jazz, improvisation, and decades of experience performing inside ensembles led by major composers and arrangers.

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Her work has been supported and recognized by organizations including Chamber Music America, ISJAC, Jazz Road, Copland House, the Bronx Council on the Arts, the Symphonic Jazz Orchestra, and the Asian Cultural Council.

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ADAMA QUARTET

Okura is also the violinist and a composer for the AdaMa Quartet, an innovative chamber ensemble featuring Guy Yehuda, clarinet; Tasha Warren, bass clarinet; Okura, violin; and Dave Eggar, cello.

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The quartet's distinctive instrumentation creates a sonic space between the traditional string quartet, wind ensemble, contemporary chamber music, improvisation, and music drawing from cultural traditions. Since its 2026 debut, AdaMa has performed internationally and is developing a repertoire of new works written specifically for the ensemble.

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Okura’s contribution includes Three Threads of Tekuma, a three-movement work drawing on Yemenite/Mizrahi, Sephardic, and Ashkenazi musical traditions. The project reflects a recurring concern throughout her work: creating contemporary music in which cultural histories are not decorative references but integral elements of musical structure and expression.

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SMALL ENSEMBLES AND IMPROVISATION

Alongside her large-scale compositions, Okura maintains an active practice as an improviser in intimate ensembles.

Her recordings include Lingering, a duo album with pianist Kevin Hays, described by The Ear as “achingly beautiful,” and NPO Trio Live at the Stone with soprano saxophonist Sam Newsome and pianist Jean-Michel Pilc.

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In August 2026, Okura released Uncommon Tones: Live at The Stone, recorded with pianist Angelica Sanchez and Newsome. The unusually spare instrumentation—violin, piano, and soprano saxophone, without bass or drums—places composition, timbre, space, and spontaneous interaction at the center of the music.

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ASIAN CULTURAL COUNCIL

In 2026, Okura traveled to Vietnam as an Asian Cultural Council Fellow, undertaking field research into traditional and Indigenous musical practices.

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The fellowship extended a longstanding dimension of her creative life: encountering musical traditions directly and considering how the experience of listening to musicians within their own communities can transform a contemporary composer’s musical language.

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Rather than treating jazz, classical music, and culturally specific traditions as separate categories, Okura’s work has increasingly explored what happens when those histories are allowed to coexist while retaining their individual identities.

 

MICHAEL BRECKER AND THE QUINDECTET

Among the most consequential experiences of Okura’s early jazz career was performing with Michael Brecker in his 15-piece Quindectet.

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The ensemble, created around Brecker’s Grammy-winning Wide Angles, brought together jazz improvisers with woodwinds, brass, guitar, rhythm section, percussion, and strings. For Okura—then a classically trained violinist finding her way into jazz—the experience became part of an informal education in orchestration, improvisation, ensemble playing, and the possibilities of large-ensemble jazz.

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More than two decades later, she has returned to that music from a radically different position.

In 2026, with the support of the Brecker family and collaborators connected to Michael Brecker’s legacy, Okura became Artistic and Musical Director of the Michael Brecker Quindectet, preparing and restoring the ensemble’s repertoire for performance.

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The revived 15-piece ensemble includes music from Wide Angles alongside works extending beyond the original Quindectet repertoire. Its October 6, 2026 performance at Birdland features tenor saxophonist Donny McCaslin.

For Okura, the project is neither a conventional tribute nor simply an archival reconstruction. It is an effort to preserve the musical architecture Brecker created while allowing the music to remain a living repertoire interpreted by contemporary musicians.

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The project also completes an unusual circle: the young classical violinist who once learned this music from inside Michael Brecker’s ensemble now returns to it as a composer, arranger, bandleader, and musical director.

 

A MUSICAL LANGUAGE WITHOUT BORDERS

Across orchestral works, chamber music, large-ensemble jazz, culturally informed composition, and free improvisation, Okura’s career has resisted a single musical identity.

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Her classical training remains audible in her sense of orchestration and instrumental color. Jazz transformed her relationship to rhythm, harmony, and spontaneity. Decades of chamber music shaped her attention to texture and interaction. Her encounters with musical traditions across cultures continue to expand the vocabulary from which she composes.

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