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The Queen of Chamber Jazz will play in Kihei and Lahaina | News, Sports, Jobs

Before her transition to jazz, Okura was a noted classical violinist. The youngest winner of the Tokyo Young Musician Debut Audition, by 17 she was the concertmaster chair of the Asian Youth Orchestra, and toured around Asia.

The first time Tokyo-born Meg Okura performed in Hawaii, she was a young, acclaimed classical violinist. “I actually played in Oahu decades ago,” Okura recalled. “I remember they gave me a break, 15 minutes on Waikiki Beach. That’s all I got.”

Okura finally returns to Hawaii, making her Maui debut as a jazz violinist teamed with Grammy winning pianist Kevin Hays for concerts in Kihei and Lahaina on Feb. 17 and 18.

The leader of the New York City-based Pan Asian Chamber Jazz Ensemble, Okura has performed at Carnegie Hall, Madison Square Garden, and the Hollywood Bowl. A Grammy nominee, she was hailed by All About Jazz as “The queen of chamber jazz,” while The New York Times described her music as “grandiloquent beauty that transitions easily from grooves to big cascades to buoyant swing.”

For her Maui shows with Hayes, Okura will feature her original compositions and some jazz standards. The duo will release an album in May called “Shamaim.” “Shamaim is a Hebrew word for sky or heaven,” she explained. “So this is like a pre-release sort of tour. We’ll feature a lot of my original compositions and we also do our interpretation of standards.”

The concerts might include some audience participation. “We use a lot of imagination and I call it spontaneous composition, meaning that we create things together at that moment. Sometimes we involve audience members and give us some inspiration and we’ll make up something entirely new.”

An award-winning jazz pianist, composer and occasional vocalist, Hays’ albums include “New Day.” The New Yorker noted, “There are plenty of talented pianists… but few have Hays’ melodic charms and sense of style.”

Before her transition to jazz, Okura was a noted classical violinist. The youngest winner of the Tokyo Young Musician Debut Audition, by 17 she was the concertmaster chair of the Asian Youth Orchestra, and toured around Asia. After making her solo debut at the Kennedy Center at 19, she studied at the Juilliard School as a classical violinist and became enamored with jazz.

“At Juilliard, composition professors insisted I become a composer,” she said. “They really thought I was extraordinarily talented as a composer. I wanted to write something really pretty, and in order for me to be able to do that, I needed to study jazz. So I had to almost stop classical violin to really humble myself to start all over again as a beginner jazz player. I played a lot of gigs that involved improvisation, which happened to be in the Jewish music scene in New York, and I also did a lot of avant-garde music.”

Over time, she performed with a range of artists including David Bowie, Ziggy Marley, saxophonist Michael Brecker, bassist Steve Swallow, jazz singer Dianne Reeves, and maverick composer John Zorn.

It was Bowie who helped her gain a Green Card for U.S. residency. Okura had played on his albums “Slow Burn” and “Heathen.” “I was already in America, and I got a Green Card through it’s called extraordinary ability,” she explained. “I had to collect recommendation letters, and David Bowie, because I was working with him, was willing to write a letter. So did Philip Glass, just different people I was working with at the time.”

Among her lauded albums with the Pan Asian Chamber Jazz Ensemble, she released “Music of Ryuichi Sakamoto,” a tribute to the legendary Japanese musician. Jazz Times said “Meg Okura has given a stunning reintroduction to the music from the genius of Ryuichi Sakamoto.”

“I was heavily influenced by Ryuichi Sakamoto,” Okura said. “No matter what genre of music he was creating, it was very authentic and honest. It always had emotional connections, and that’s how I also create my music.”

As far as other influences she said, “I’m sure I have some influence by the world fusion sound, the way I combine, even though I never really study fusion music. When you study music, you mainly study bebop. I loved listening to a lot of Jean-Luc Ponty and fusion music from the ’60s and ’70s. I love that sound though for myself, I had to find my own sound, which is to combine classical influence and mostly acoustic sound, embracing all of my identities from the past, embracing my classical background as well. That was my way of making sense with my life.”

Jazz Maui presents the Meg Okura & Kevin Hayes Duo on Feb. 17 at 7:30 p.m. at the ProArts Playhouse. Tickets are $35, $30, $25 and $20. Tickets are available at ProArtsMaui.org. Joined by bassist Ian Sheridan and drummer Paul Marchetti, they perform a Sunset Jazz Series concert on Feb. 18 at 5 p.m. at Maui Ku’ia Estate Chocolate in Lahaina. Tickets are $25.

Before her transition to jazz, Okura was a noted classical violinist. The youngest winner of the Tokyo Young Musician Debut Audition, by 17 she was the concertmaster chair of the Asian Youth Orchestra, and toured around Asia.

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Noelle Montes

Update: 2024-05-17