I said yes immediately.

It didn’t occur to me until afterward that I should probably look at my calendar. Of course, I already had gigs with Pharaoh’s Daughter () on those dates.

I spent that night dreading the conversation I would have to have the next morning. We still had a whole week of performances in Iowa, and now I had to tell the band that I wanted to bail on future gigs because Michael Brecker had called.

But when I finally told them, nobody was angry. They celebrated.

For the rest of the week, I kept hearing:

“Wow, Meg! You’re going to be touring with Michael Brecker!”

In college, I had one of those boom boxes with a multi-CD changer. Return of the Brecker Brothers and Out of the Loop lived in there alongside Pat Metheny, Brian Blade Fellowship, Stuff Smith, and probably the Glazunov Violin Concerto.

Back then, we listened to the same handful of CDs. They would spin around in that machine for days, sometimes weeks, until you could sing everyone’s solos.

And now I was going to tour Japan with Michael Brecker.

But first, we had a whole week at the Iridium in New York.

I was nervous just being in that band— Adam Rogers, , Robin Eubanks, the musical director, Gil Goldstein, and then, of course, Michael Brecker himself. Even Antonio Sanchez, who was only a few years older than me, was already a jazz star.

I was unmistakably the baby of the Quindectet.

After Michael found out that I improvised, he told me to choose where I wanted to solo. I chose Timbuktu, and it became my feature for the tour.

So I shed. A lot.

Every night, I had to stand up and improvise right next to Mike, and in front of this band, and audiences filled with accomplished musicians. In New York, I would look out and recognize some famous faces.

But nothing quite prepared me for the Hollywood Bowl.

I still remember looking out from the stage and feeling exposed by the sheer size of it. By the time we started Timbuktu, my heart was pounding in a blazing swing rather than the 12/8 feel of the tune.

In 2005, Mike became ill, and there were no future Quindectet tours on my calendar.

So I started my own group that year. I called it the Pan Asian Chamber Jazz Ensemble. booked our very first gig at a place called Makor on the Upper West Side where we had to be Kosher, or at least not UnKosher.

I wasn’t playing Carnegie Hall or the Hollywood Bowl with this group, but the music was mine. I wrote the music, and I led the musicians.

It was a new beginning.

One January, I was at the annual IAJE conference at the Hilton in New York. Near the escalator on an upper floor, I saw standing alone by the railing, hunched forward with one hand covering his forehead, his face turned toward the floor. He looked deeply distressed.

I froze. I could have gone up to him, but I had no words. So I said nothing.

The next day, while I was at the conference, my husband Sam called me on my flip phone.

“I have sad news.”

Mike passed away.

The entire jazz world mourned him. For days, I had a lump in my throat. Eventually, I had to stop thinking about Mike, almost pretending I had never toured with the Quindectet. I never really wanted to hear the Quindectet music again. It was too painful. For me, for more than one reason.

More than twenty years later, I’m leading the M.B.Q., with the trust and encouragement of Darryl Pitt and Susan Brecker.

When I first decided to put the M.B.Q. back together, I thought I could simply locate the scores and parts and call the musicians. It would be exciting, and I thought studying the charts would be good for me.

I had no idea how much studying I was about to do.

The Living Jazz Archive had PDFs from the original Wide Angles recording, but not all the additional pieces we had played on tour. Gil Goldstein was kind enough to share some of his files with me, and we had a great time catching up—now as composers. He told me he had read about the 68-piece piece I wrote for the Symphonic Jazz Orchestra last year.

After collecting everything I could find, I left for Vietnam for my Asian Cultural Council field study. I was in the middle of something of a midlife crisis, looking for myself, and perhaps for something new.

Instead, I found myself going back to Mike’s music. Back to something I had barely begun to explore twenty years earlier.

From the couch in my hotel room in Da Nang, I could look out over the beach and watch people parasailing over the water. Meanwhile, I was getting intimately familiar with Gil’s scores—his notation style, his aesthetic, his priorities, what he chose to put on the page and what he didn’t. His scores looked a lot like mine, both of us writing outside the usual conventions of traditional big-band arranging. It made me feel closer to him.

But something was beginning to worry me.

So I called my friend Erica Seguine, a highly accomplished jazz composer and my go-to whenever I need guidance with large ensemble writing. Erica always seems to have a solution.

She spent some time with the scores, parts, and unreleased recordings from the Michael Brecker Living Jazz Archive. Then, working around the eleven-hour time difference, we got on the phone.

“So, can I somehow make all of this work with only one rehearsal?”

Her answer was pretty clear: not like this.

The real problem was time. If the concert had been two years away, I could have studied every score, compared every recording, and reconstructed the music note by note myself. But I didn’t have two years.

For the next few days, I seriously considered canceling the concert. I found myself weighing the humiliation of canceling against the possibility of putting on a terrible performance and losing the trust people had placed in me. Canceling seemed like the lesser disaster.

Then I remembered my old classmate Ryuta Yoshimura (吉村 龍太), a classical composition major who had spent much of his career in the pop industry in Japan— or better known these days as violinist HIMARI’s dad.

I messaged him on LINE and told him I was afraid I might have to cancel the Birdland concert.

“I want to give you a hug 🫂,” he wrote.

“I appreciate that, but that’s really not going to help me. 😭”

What I actually wanted to know was whether he knew a young composition student who could retype every note into Dorico, the notation software I use. It would be painstaking work, but fairly straightforward. Then I could focus on the harder part: comparing the written music against live recordings from the archive and reconstructing all the information that was missing—articulations, dynamics, repeats, solo assignments, and the many changes we had made in performance.

Instead, Ryuta listened to the recordings and studied the scores himself for several days. Then he called me and spent over an hour asking questions.

And then he volunteered to do it himself.

Throughout the rest of my trip in Vietnam, I kept entering notes whenever I could—in hotels, on planes, at airports. Hours and hours of this incredibly mundane work.

After I returned from Asia, Ryuta and I really got to work. For several weeks, we worked tirelessly, comparing scores and parts against unreleased live recordings, correcting notes, restoring missing information, and making decisions about what belonged in the 2026 version. It was hard work, but we thanked each other for yoi benkyō (良い勉強)—good study.

Here’s a glimpse of how Ryuta reconstructed the M.B.Q. 2026 versions of scores.

While Ryuta was working on the reconstruction, I got to do something much more fun: write new arrangements.

Itsbynne Reel, for example, didn’t make much sense without Gil’s accordion. And honestly, if I was going to bring this music back, I needed MORE FIDDLING!

So instead of reconstructing Gil’s arrangement, I started from scratch and made the “O’Kura version.”

And here is the sneak peek for those who want to check out the score, exclusively here on Substack, UnKosher Notes, performed by Dorico!

A few days ago, we finally sent the music to the musicians. I honestly don’t know how I could have done this without him.

In hindsight, a hug would have been sufficient.

Then there was the elephant in the room.

Whenever I told musicians that I was putting together a new Michael Brecker Quindectet, I would see the same blank expression for a second.

Michael Brecker Quindectet. Without Michael Brecker.

Mike was a tenor titan.

Who will play the tenor?

The elephant in the room.

“THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM will play the tenor!!”

Sometimes picturing that elephant producing the multiphonics from Delta City Blues is what keeps me going.

Because absurd as it sounds, we are actually doing this.

None of it would be possible without the people Mike left behind. Susan Brecker generously made his music available through the Michael Brecker Living Jazz Archive, which Dr. David Demsey has devoted himself to preserving. Darryl Pitt, Mike’s longtime manager and best friend, has been a consultant to this project from the beginning. Dan Willis, the original touring oboist and a tenor player himself, became an even deeper student of Mike’s music after his death and has been instrumental in working with the Living Jazz Archive to make MBQ 2026 possible. Erica Seguine helped me figure out how to navigate this music. At the concert, she’ll literally be showing us how with her arms. And Ryuta Yoshimura has been my right hand through all of this.

Then there is —the perfect tenor to take on the elephant in the room.

For the project image, I chose the cover photograph from ’s Ode to a Tenor Titan, taken by Ssirus W. Pakzad. It brings me back to the Mike I remember—the soft-spoken, hard-playing Michael Brecker.

And all of us are here because of him.

I don’t know what Mike would think of all of this: the reconstructed scores, the new arrangements, the elephant in his chair.

But more than twenty years later, I find myself studying his music more closely than I ever did when I was actually in his band.

I went halfway around the world looking for something new. Somehow, I ended up going back to my old dream.

My daughter is starting tenth grade. I’m going back to school too.

My subject? Michael Brecker’s music.

January 13, 2027, will mark the 20th anniversary of his passing.

I’m now ready to go back.

If not now, when?

The post got close to 2,000 views and two dozen shares. Then I heard from more musicians, publicists, and other people in the industry—some publicly, some privately. Now, I want to join the conversation.

When I published the first post, I was hoping no publicists would actually read it.

Of course they did.

And one publicist told me that the premise itself stung. “It generalizes all of us when not all publicists are created equal.”

I agree 100 percent. In fact, that comment helped me realize:

The question is whether you found the right publicist for you and your project.

“I can get the same results doing it myself.”

Several musicians said some version of this. One respondent told me that much of the press they received came through their “own connections with touring, collaboration with other artists and social media building.” When they hired publicists, the results were “less than or just the same” as their own outreach.

One of the advantages of having a publicist reach out to the same contacts you have, at the most basic level, is that they are NOT you. They can advocate for you in ways that would sound ridiculous coming from your own mouth. But beyond that, they should have relationships, access, and trust with people you don’t.

Maybe you needed a different one.

Swipe left.

But don’t give up on finding the right match.

“What exactly are publicists doing for all that money?”

This came up repeatedly. One musician told me their publicist “mostly did nothing.” Another said their campaign began with the publicist using ChatGPT to write the one-sheet, and “it was downhill from there.”

Then I heard from the other side. One publicist told me they routinely work twelve-hour days for their clients.

But here’s where I think we may be asking the wrong question. You aren’t paying a publicist by the hour.

Here is another piece of dating advice:

A publicist’s value isn’t simply the number of hours they spend on your project. You’re paying for the relationships, judgment, reputation, and trust they accumulated long before you hired them.

And you’re not necessarily the only person on the ride. A publicist with a strong roster has a whole bandwagon of artists. Those other clients may actually make the publicist more efficient and more effective. They have more reasons to be in regular contact with journalists, editors, radio programmers and other people in the industry. When their emails arrive, people know there may be something worth paying attention to.

So the question isn’t how “hard” they work for you. It’s what they can bring back to you.

Would you rather pay the same amount for a publicist who dedicates 100 percent of their time to your project alone, or one who has nine other very strong clients whose bandwagon you get to ride?

“I spent a lot of money on publicity and still didn’t get the results I wanted.”

This can be another kind of mismatch.

You may be able to afford one of the best publicists in the business. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you are the right artist for that publicist’s bandwagon.

And I don’t mean that as an insult to your musicianship. I’m sure most musicians considering an expensive publicity campaign are very good. But in my opinion,

Maybe it’s extraordinary music. But it could also be a compelling story, an unusual concept, a distinctive personality, an unexpected collaboration, a fascinating history, or simply something about you or your project that makes people curious. A less accomplished musician with a fascinating story may actually give a publicist more to work with than a brilliant musician whose only story is: I made another very good jazz album.

We’ve all seen artists with substantial financial backing whose careers took off. But we’ve also seen—or more accurately, not seen—well-funded artists whose careers didn’t.

You also have to be right for the publicist no matter how much money you can spend.

There are also different levels of publicity. High-level publicity costs more than basic servicing designed primarily to get your album reviews and radio play. But sometimes basic servicing is exactly what you need—especially for a first album when your bank balance is low.

Paying premium prices for a premium publicist when that isn’t what your project needs may be exactly why you’re unhappy with your ROI.

Hopefully, they choose you too.

Dating goes both ways.

I’ve been turned down by publicists. Sometimes the reason was clearly timing. Other times I didn’t know why—and perhaps I didn’t want to know.

Publicist recently wrote in his Substack :

“The majority of what comes to my inbox as far as potential projects, I turn down, either because I don’t feel I can do it justice or it doesn’t align with my taste or the prevailing musical zeitgeist of this cultural moment.”

In dating, you can meet a man who looks perfect on paper—successful, attractive, accomplished, everything you thought you wanted. But if he’s just not that into you, what’s the point of investing yourself in that relationship?

Maybe rejection just saved you from an expensive bad relationship. And sometimes, the rejection is not permanent. The same publicist who had rejected me years earlier later agreed to represent me.

“Which brings me to another piece of dating advice.

The right person at the wrong time is the wrong person.

I’ve hired several very different publicists over the course of fifteen years. All produced the results I wanted, and sometimes more. But I don’t think I could simply swap them around on the timeline of my career and expect the same results. The publicist who was right for me fifteen years ago might be completely wrong for me today.

One of my recent albums, Isaiah, was released four years after it was recorded.

I waited because I had outside evidence that the music was very strong. Tracks from the project had already won several grants and competitions, where they were evaluated alongside work by Grammy-winning artists. They kicked ass.

But I wasn’t sure my career was ready for the level of publicity I thought the album deserved. If I was going to spend the premium dollars for a premium publicist, I had to be sure about the timing as well.

So instead of releasing Isaiah as soon as it was ready, I released a duo album with (“Lingering” on ) first. I wanted another project circulating, another round of publicity, and more recognition attached to my name before spending considerably more to promote Isaiah.

Was I right to wait? I have no idea.

Maybe releasing Isaiah four years earlier would have moved my career forward four years earlier. There is no alternate version of my career to compare it with.

But here’s another question I can’t answer: What would have happened if I had released Isaiah without hiring a publicist at all?

What does not hiring a publicist cost?

Everyone asks what happens if you spend $3,000 or $4,000 on publicity and nothing meaningful happens. That’s a fear many of us have regardless of our experience or status. Algorithms change constantly, and so do trends, social norms, and expectations.

But what if you don’t spend it—and nothing happens?

You may have spent tens of thousands of dollars making an album: musicians, studio time, mixing, mastering, artwork, manufacturing. Maybe you spent years composing the music. And then, at precisely the moment when you need people to know that this thing exists, you decide publicity is where you’re going to save money.

What if I had decided not to hire a publicist at all after making something that I believe represents a genuine leap in my work, such as Isaiah?

I can’t prove what would have happened.

But I do have twenty years of evidence.

I had never appeared in the DownBeat Critics Poll. After Isaiah and its publicity campaign, I appeared in three categories–Violinist of the Year, Rising Star Composer, and Rising Star Large Ensemble—the last one ranked 5th on the list right beneath Remy Le Boeuf’s Assembly of Shadows.

Would I have magically appeared without the campaign? Based on the pattern I had seen for twenty years, I wouldn’t have bet on it.

ROI to me is like the old Mastercard commercial.

Remember those old Mastercard commercials?

“Two tickets: $28.”
“Two hot dogs, two popcorns and two sodas: $18.”
“One autographed baseball: $45.”
“Real conversation with 11-year-old son: priceless.”

For me, what I am ultimately paying for is something intangible: how all of this makes me feel about myself. Maybe for others, it’s different. I used to joke with my publicist that they were my therapist.

Reviews and interviews are wonderful, and we hope they lead to something—or do something for our careers years from now. We don’t really know.

None of this makes the price easier to swallow. But for me, not publicizing a major project isn’t really an option anymore. The question is how much I can justify spending on this particular one.

There are the things you can’t put a price on.

A few years ago, my sister received an email from Strings Magazine with me featured at the top of the newsletter. Thanks to !

My sister is a classical violinist. In some ways, she represents a parallel version of my life—the path I might have followed had I made very different choices.

How much was it worth to have my sister finally give it up and admit that maybe I was doing something worthwhile?

Priceless.

Then there was The New York Times. Publicist, , must have worked hard to get this one! A color photograph of me appeared in the Sunday paper alongside a rave for my album, Ima Ima—“ima” meaning “now” in Japanese and “mom” in Hebrew.

A few days later, the head of a cantorial school—a seminary that trains Jewish cantors—I had considered attending reached out to me. I told her what had made me stop pursuing the school. She apologized for her staff having asked me, already in my forties with a master’s degree from Juilliard, to start with a bachelor’s degree in gender studies and take the TOEFL, an English proficiency test for foreign students. She then told me that if I ever changed my mind, the door would always be open.

Imagining her stunned face when she realized what her staff had told me to do?

Priceless.

For many women, another birthday is bittersweet—or sometimes downright depressing after a certain age. I remember feeling “too old” when I turned 27.

Today, just thinking about that 27-year-old me makes me annoyed with her. With me.

We want to be young, beautiful, and desirable. And surprisingly, that desire doesn’t necessarily disappear as we get older. I remember my grandmother, at 90, feeling sad about her wrinkled face. I was shocked. At the time, I somehow assumed that by 90, you would be cured of such concerns.

Apparently not.

Last year, I started writing here on Substack, creating what has sometimes amounted to a public record of my “midlife crisis.” One of my colleagues has corrected me that we were actually passed midlife. That startled me because he was right.

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Some of you read “Why I’m Leaving,” in which I wrote about needing to spend time away from the West and experience life in Asia again. Earlier this summer, I spent two months in Vietnam as an Asian Cultural Council Fellow, conducting field research and cultural exchange.

Part of the reason I wanted to go was much larger than music. I had begun thinking about how I wanted to live the last third of my life: with less stress, more adventure, new problems to solve, and challenges that were at least novel.

Vietnam offered many new perspectives and breakthroughs. But it was in Japan that I suddenly felt freed from my age.

Friends organized two reunions of the “Moguras”—the moles of Toho Gakuen’s basement classrooms. (I talked about the Moguras last year, in my piece titled A World Without Grace)

And here I am playing the Bruch Violin Concerto at 16 with the Mogura Philharmonic Orchestra! (1991 もぐらフィルハーモニー管弦楽団）

There was a small, intimate gathering and then a much larger production. I also spent time individually with friends I had known since we were teenagers.

I hadn’t thought about it that way.

My classmates are thriving at our age. Many keep performing and or teaching. Some have become celebrity-level musicians. Many hold positions in major orchestras; others have built careers in academia. Some changed careers entirely. Some are now raising extraordinary musicians of their own, including HIMARI.

Some have gotten married recently—some for the first time, others not.

And strangely, many of the boys look better now than they did when they were 16.

We were fun kids then. But today we are much more interesting human beings. We have careers, children, divorces, marriages, disappointments, successes, deaths, failures, adventures, and decades of stories behind us.

And yet, when we were together, we were also still those kids.

We giggled. We nearly cried remembering things that had happened more than three decades ago.

Japan is a country of older people.

As of 2024, 29.3 percent of the population was 65 or older—more than 36 million people. Even more strikingly, 16.8 percent of the entire population was already 75 or older. (Statistics Bureau of Japan)

And according to Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, in 2025 there were 99,763 people aged 100 or older. Almost 100,000 centenarians. About 88 percent of them were women. (Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare)

There are serious economic and social consequences to these demographics, of course. But I began thinking about something much more personal.

If you live in a society where people routinely live into their 80s and 90s—and nearly 100,000 people have already crossed 100—then 50-something occupies a very different psychological position.

You cannot simply plan to disappear into retirement at 70 or 75. You don’t know how long you are going to live. None of us does. But you may need to prepare for the possibility that there is considerably more life ahead than you thought.

Maybe “the last third” really was premature.

I do embrace the sound of “the second half” better.

Today, I feel younger than I did before I left three months ago.

Much like I felt richer and taller in Vietnam, I feel younger in Japan.

And if I think about “relativity” dictating how young I feel, this brings me back to the occupational hazard of being a classical composer.

There is actually one enormous upside.

Take a look at this T-shirt from the Grand Teton Music Festival a few years back.

It starts with “Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, Mahler, Tchaikovsky ... Okura, followed immediately by Hyden, who was born in 1732.

Suddenly, I feel very young. And unlike them, I am still alive.

And lately, I feel particularly alive—perhaps even a little dangerous. And excited.

You don’t have to go to Japan to feel younger. But it’s good to know that the option is there. I can and want to spend more time in Japan now, more than ever, especially while my parents are still alive.

Thank you so much for your birthday wishes.

August 14:

Release of “Uncommon Tones: Live at the Stone” by Meg Okura | |

September 6

Hamptons JazzFest with Meg Okura Quintet feat. Sam Newsome

October 6

Birdland Jazz Club, Michael Brecker Quindectet feat. , artistic director: Meg Okura

https://www.megokura.com/mbq

October 7

iBeam, Meg Okura | Angelica Sanchez | Sam Newsome

I met Basya in 1999 during the filming of the MTV Video Music Awards. We were all dressed up for our appearance, and while everyone else was waiting around, she was telling these incredible stories about her travels after leaving her community in Borough Park, Brooklyn, and about her own "unorthodoxing." I was immediately fascinated.

The following year, Basya invited me to play on Exodus after I was recommended by for the project. I have been the violinist in Pharaoh’s Daughter ever since.

Looking back, that was the beginning of my own un-kosher journey of unbecoming—my entry into the downtown music scene, Jewish music, jazz, new languages like Yiddish, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Ladino, odd-meter grooves (including cycles of ten), and a creative community that would profoundly shape my life.

Basya, along with the artistic world surrounding John Zorn and so many others, became one of the great catalysts in my artistic life.

A couple of days ago, I asked Basya what she wanted for her birthday. She spends the summer on Fire Island serving as a cantor, so I assumed she might need something practical—perhaps something from an Amazon wish list.

Instead, her answer stopped me in my tracks.

She asked me to help people discover our new album, Songs of Desire by Pharaoh’s Daughter on Tzadik Records.

It may have been the most honest, heartfelt, expensive—and at the same time completely free—birthday request I have ever received.

It made me realize how little attention I had paid to something she genuinely needed. Somehow, I had convinced myself that Basya didn’t need my help. In my mind, she had already “made it.” Pharaoh’s Daughter had played major world music festivals, SummerStage, Carnegie Hall, and toured Europe and South America. She is an ordained cantor at thriving congregations and continues to inspire people wherever she goes.

If anyone didn’t need help getting the word out, I thought it was Basya. How wrong I was in 2026?

Perhaps I was also guilty of something else: a scarcity mindset.

Like many musicians, I spend so much time trying to keep my own projects afloat that I rarely think about promoting someone else’s—even friends I deeply admire, even projects I’m happy to be part of. Yet somehow, it feels as though doing so takes something away from my own work.

My trio album Uncommon Tones: Live at the Stone (from ) with and —with appearing as a guest on one track—comes out next week. I don’t think anyone in my family in Japan even knows it’s being released.

It’s not because they don’t care deeply about me. But this music isn’t going to end up on their playlist—in fact, my parents don’t even have playlists. They still have a boom box, and I didn’t make physical CDs for this release.

They’re simply living their own lives.

Attention may be the most expensive currency in the arts.

Which brings me to a publicist.

This year, after more than twenty-five years in and around the jazz world, I was fortunate enough to appear in both the DownBeat Critics Poll and the Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll for the first time. In many cases, I ranked higher than some of the artists I have admired for years. If I credited only the music and ignored the work of my publicity team, that would be incomplete—and frankly, dishonest.

While I was composing, rehearsing, and performing, there was another team thinking every day about something I wasn’t: who should hear this music, how to reach them, and how to introduce them to it.

Like many musicians, I’ve heard countless conversations arguing that hiring a publicist simply isn’t worth the money. I have my own opinions, but they’re inevitably shaped by my own experiences. And when it comes to Isaiah (Adhyâropa Records), featuring , , and , I admit that I’m deeply partial to my publicity team. I hold them in the highest regard. Each week, I looked forward to our Zoom meeting, which often extended far beyond the allotted time.

So rather than write another opinion piece, I decided to ask the people who would know best.

I surveyed fellow jazz musicians who had actually hired publicists, hoping to better understand what they spent, what they expected, what they gained, and whether they felt the investment was worthwhile.

I received responses from thirty musicians. Ideally, I would have liked a larger sample, but I believe these responses still provide a meaningful glimpse into my colleagues’ experiences.

One important area I failed to include in the survey was playlisting. Until recently, I didn’t fully appreciate that playlist pitching has become an integral part of many publicity campaigns. In today’s streaming landscape, that omission feels significant, and it’s something I’ll keep in mind if I conduct a follow-up survey.

One result that surprised me was the highest reported amount spent on publicity—it was slightly lower than I had expected. Perhaps initial quotes are simply starting points, with room for negotiation, discounts, or scaled-down campaigns.

I was also curious whether spending more led to better results. Unfortunately, this survey can’t answer that, making it one of its main limitations. A future survey should examine the relationship between investment and outcomes more directly.

What this chart suggests is that most artists prioritize professionalism over personal enthusiasm. In other words, they don't necessarily expect a publicist to fall in love with the music—they expect them to do their job well.

Nearly two-thirds of respondents said their publicity campaign fell below expectations. Yet only half felt the fee was unjustified, while one-third believed it probably or definitely was justified. This suggests that many musicians distinguish between disappointment with the outcome and fairness of the fee. A campaign can fall short of expectations without necessarily reflecting poor work or unreasonable pricing.

One respondent wrote:

Another wrote:

My own conclusion is that publicity remains relevant. Whether it is "worth it" depends on what success looks like for each artist. In today's fragmented media landscape, the return on investment is far more difficult to measure than a simple dollar-for-dollar calculation.

Yet perhaps the biggest lesson I took away had nothing to do with publicists, but it came from a birthday wish that made me realize that I should have been paying more attention to her wish. An obvious one.

One anonymous respondent:

So, are publicists worth it?

After surveying thirty-one musicians, my answer is still yes—but with an asterisk.

Publicists can open doors that most of us cannot. They spend years cultivating relationships with journalists, editors, radio hosts, venues, festivals or record labels. Those relationships have real value, even if the results are difficult to measure. At the same time, this survey reminds us that no publicity campaign, no matter how well executed, can guarantee attention in today’s crowded media landscape.

Perhaps that means we shouldn’t ask publicists to solve the entire problem.

As artists, presenters, writers, listeners, and friends, we all have a role to play.

An authentic customer review is invaluable to most of us. Yes, it takes time to write it. But so does sending a physical card or flowers.

Basya’s birthday wish reminded me of that.

Happy Birthday, Basya!

“The DownBeat Critics Poll is out.”

It was the day I had dreaded every year for the last decade.

In our house, we rarely talked about it. We both knew what the day meant for one of us, and somehow it felt easier to avoid the conversation.

Just a few weeks earlier, while still in Vietnam, I had written a Substack essay titled What to Do When You Are Not on the Critics Poll (But You Believe You Should Be.) I knew I couldn’t be alone in dreading that day, feeling left out, irrelevant, and ignored.

While I was still asleep in Asia, many of my colleagues in the United States were already celebrating and sharing their results online. I opened Facebook and, almost immediately, saw my dear friend ‘s posts. I had no doubt he would do very well—especially after winning a Grammy earlier this year—and sure enough, he appeared in several categories.

Then something caught my eye.

Under the Rising-Star Large Ensemble, Remy’s Assembly of Shadows, I saw another name.

Meg Okura Pan Asian Chamber Jazz Ensemble.

In my previous article, I wrote about continuing to make meaningful work regardless of recognition in the poll. But I also have to admit: I was wrong about one thing.

The conventional wisdom is simple: define your brand, choose your category, and make it easy for people to understand who you are. A clear identity is easier for people to recognize.

After winning international competitions as a classical and jazz composer, writing for large jazz ensembles, performing classical music, jazz, and Jewish liturgical music, and collaborating with leading musicians in each field, I still wanted a narrower path.

I wanted that clarity for myself, not just for marketing or PR.

That was one of the reasons I went to Vietnam.

I needed distance. I hoped Vietnam would reveal a clearer artistic and personal identity.

I thought perhaps Vietnam would answer the question: Who am I?

Instead, Vietnam made the question irrelevant.

When I arrived in Vietnam, I found myself enjoying something unexpected: blending in.

For once, I was not immediately treated as foreign. People assumed I was Vietnamese. They spoke to me in Vietnamese. They assumed I understood the local rhythm of life.

Of course, I did not.

When I told people I was from America, they were often confused.

“But you look Asian.”

I found myself explaining: “I am Japanese but I’m an American citizen.”

They looked confused, then moved on. Nobody really cared.

Appearance can reveal ancestry. It cannot reveal culture, language, values, or experience.

The same person can be perceived completely differently simply by crossing an ocean.

I also met expatriates who had built lives in Vietnam. None were trying to become Vietnamese. They simply participated respectfully. They followed local customs, contributed where they could, and let the locals decide where they belonged.

In Pleiku, I was simply a violinist sharing music with people who had never heard the instrument live. With the Jarai community, I became a student learning K’ni from Tih Rocham. At an elementary school, I helped lead an English-language game. In Da Nang, I returned to my classical roots with a recital. With Vietnamese jazz musicians, I was another jazz musician sitting in. In Korea, I was recognized as a classical composer and violinist. In Tokyo, I was a Japanese-born jazz violinist creating multicultural projects.

I had grown accustomed to explaining everything else I did, as if one part of me was never enough. But in each community, one part was enough. I didn’t need to present my whole identity to be accepted.

And for the first time, that felt freeing. The relief was immediate. I no longer felt responsible for making everyone understand all of me.

For years, I thought my lack of recognition might be because I refused to simplify myself.

Perhaps I should have chosen one category and made myself easier to understand.

But this year, the critics’ poll showed me something different.

Seeing my name alongside artists I deeply respect — including Remy Le Boeuf’s Assembly of Shadows and — felt like a moment of arrival.

The categories did not exclude me. They included me.

The answer was not to narrow myself.

The answer was to continue being honest about the work I was already doing.

Everyone wants to belong.

I am relinquishing the responsibility to categorize myself.

I can be Japanese, American, a jazz violinist, a composer, a chamber musician, and a bandleader. They are not competing identities. They are simply different ways people encounter me—just as I am a daughter, a sister, and an aunt, depending on who is looking.

In Part 2, I’ll shift from identity to career and discuss what I learned about working with a publicist—a question I receive surprisingly often from younger musicians.

In recent years, we stopped talking about it. Neither he nor I ever brings it up, and we both pretend it doesn’t exist despite seeing so many of the screenshots shared on Facebook with a circle around their names.

I had once complained about not being on the list, despite the various accolades I had collected over the years, and I expected some version of “You deserve to be on the list.”

Instead, Sam told me the opposite.

“You’re not releasing albums that warrant being on the critics’ polls.”

So what should I, or YOU do, if you are like me—someone who is “in” the field of jazz, but somehow never appears on the critics poll despite feeling like you probably should?

I don’t have a quick guide of ten things you must do. I can only tell you what I did.

The first thing I learned was to stay off Facebook for a few days.

Every summer, musicians post their critics’ poll rankings. There is nothing wrong with that. They are happy, proud, and sharing good news with their friends.

The problem is that if you are not on the list, your feed can start to feel like one long reminder that everyone else is getting invited to the party except you.

We care how our peers see us. We care whether people are paying attention. We care whether we are still relevant.

The second thing I learned was that pretending not to care doesn’t work.

For years, I told myself that critics polls didn’t matter. I reminded myself that many extraordinary musicians had never made the list. I reminded myself that the poll was not a measure of artistic worth.

I was supposedly enlightened enough not to care.

But I still wanted some kind of validation for my work.

One thing I appreciated about composition competitions is that many of them are judged blindly. Nobody knows who I am. The music either survives on its own or it doesn’t.

So I started submitting tracks from ISAIAH to some of my dream competitions long before the album was released. The music earned several honors, including the ISJAC (International Society of Jazz Arrangers and Composers) Fundamental Freedoms Commission and the Symphonic Jazz Orchestra's George Duke Commissioning Prize.

Winning those awards definitely gave me validation for the work itself, and they did so using criteria almost opposite from those of a critics poll.

A critics poll is a reflection of visibility, awareness, relationships, records, reviews, conversations, and all sorts of things that exist around the music itself.

The awards validated my work: the issue was never whether the work had value. What I wanted was a sense of acceptance, relevance, and belonging within the jazz community.

If anything, those recognitions only made that more obvious.

A few years ago, an older jazz violinist I respect told me that even he wasn’t on the critics’ polls’ ballot for many years. I thought that was impossible. Here was someone whose work I had known for decades. It turned out that one of the writers had simply reached out to the editor and asked that his name be added to the ballot. After that, he consistently received votes.

So I talked to a few people and followed a few dead ends.

At this point, you might wonder why I still cared so much.

The truth is that I have never been anti-DownBeat. Quite the opposite. I subscribe to the print edition, have advertised in the magazine, and continue to support it. Even in an age of podcasts, YouTube channels, newsletters, and social media, I still think magazines matter. They provide continuity, context, and a historical record that is difficult to replace. The critics’ polls matter to me precisely because I care about what DownBeat represents, and not because every review goes my way.

If I wanted to maximize my chances of getting on the ballot, I should make certain kinds of records. A straight-ahead quartet record where I spend a lot of time soloing. A large ensemble (big band) record that I composed and conducted, but one that I didn't feature myself on the violin. This is what Sam told me, and it made perfect sense.

But at this point in my life, everything I do has to feel authentic and meaningful. Lately, I have felt a bit stuck.

The problem wasn’t simply that I wasn’t on the critics poll. It was that something wasn’t converting the way I thought it should.

Part of the reason I came to Vietnam was to step outside of my usual environment and reevaluate what I was doing. To learn, listen, observe, and absorb, even though I had no idea what I was going to learn from my experiences here. I simply knew how important it was to spend time feeding the creative ground that future work will grow from.

Instead of trying to produce more, I found myself wanting to learn more.

This August, I am releasing a live trio album with Angelica Sanchez and Sam Newsome, consisting entirely of improvised music recorded live at The Stone. Much of my energy this fall will also go toward reviving Michael Brecker Quindectet music for a performance at Birdland featuring Donny McCaslin.

The trio album is simply three musicians improvising together and following wherever the music leads. Instead of working harder, planning more, or building a larger project, I wanted to connect with what was already inside of me. It is about curiosity, artistic trust, and allowing the music to unfold without trying to control where it goes.

The Quindectet project comes from reflection and a desire to revisit music that, for a long time, felt frozen in time. More than twenty years after touring with the band, I find myself studying it again, hearing things I missed the first time, and discovering aspects of it that I could not have understood back then. At this point in my life, that process of learning, listening, and absorbing feels more important to me than producing something new.

During these past several weeks in Vietnam, I have experienced and learned new things, including things about myself and my music. One of the things I have repeatedly found is that my music is my most valuable and portable asset, more useful than the favorable exchange rate between the U.S. dollar and the Vietnamese dong.

Back home, I often think about jazz as a career that I invest in. Here, my music already buys something else. Being a musician buys trust. It buys introductions. It opens doors. It creates friendships. It gives me access to people, places, and experiences that I never would have encountered otherwise.

In Pleiku, many of the people who heard me play had never heard a violin in person before. Meaningful access to these communities is not easily granted to outsiders, yet I found myself sitting on the floor of the home of the Jarai master musician Tih Ro Cham, sharing a meal after spending the afternoon learning and jamming with him on the K’ni. By that evening, he had invited me to perform as a featured guest on violin at a community event.

Experiences like this have repeated themselves throughout Vietnam. What began as a field study has turned into invitations to perform, teach, and connect. I have played on an outdoor stage at a farmstay, performed for a public elementary school, given a masterclass at a music school, presented a classical recital for the Korean expatriate community, and been welcomed into countless conversations, meals, and musical exchanges, with more still to come.

Again and again, I have been reminded that people are not responding to my résumé, my reviews, or my position within the New York jazz scene. They are responding to the value I can bring as a musician to their community.

That doesn’t mean I suddenly stopped caring about the critics poll. I still care. I still want to feel like I am part of the conversation. I still want to feel included. I still want to feel accepted by and feel valuable in the jazz community.

What I have learned in Vietnam is that this is about more than simply being a “big fish in a small pond.” Many of us are holding something that is genuinely valuable to other people, but we spend our entire careers trying to exchange that value within the same small ecosystem.

There is nothing wrong with wanting relevance, visibility, or recognition. I still want those things myself.

But sometimes it is worth taking your currency somewhere else. Your exchange rate is far more favorable than you ever realized.

Then again, becoming an actual millionaire overnight in Vietnamese dong does make the lesson easier to appreciate.

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The first few days in Vietnam, my biggest fear was whether I would cross the streets unharmed or survive the 90-degree heat. I was terrified of getting hit by a motorcycle or being attacked and robbed, ending up completely helpless as a foreign woman traveling alone in a country where I couldn’t speak the language. Even though I have practiced, my Vietnamese tones are not perfect, and they actually don’t understand what I am saying unless my tones and pronunciation are perfect.

But by the second week, you suddenly feel like a professional traveler. You are no longer shocked or sad that they don’t understand you. You master basic survival skills like converting Vietnamese dong (the local currency) in your head and becoming an overnight millionaire.

You cross the street and ride the bicycle less defensively and more offensively– or just with more confidence. You start eating strange foods without asking too many questions. And at one dinner, it was a plate of bugs. They were tasty! Somehow, I even managed to take an overnight bus from Pleiku to Da Nang entirely by myself.

Here in Da Nang/Hoi An, I am currently solo and surprisingly happy. I thought I would get lonely, but instead, I feel comfortable, relaxed, and strangely confident. There are many foreigners here, but for the first time in my life, I also discovered the strange relief of not looking white while still being just as foreign.

I feel like I have some kind of superpower here. I blend in just enough to disappear.

It’s not exactly a feeling of superiority. It’s more like… carelessness. A strange confidence based purely on appearance rather than ability or knowledge. Thousands of foreigners live here, and they know much more about the local customs and language than I do. Yet, nobody immediately sees me as an outsider. And now I’m starting to wonder if this is secretly what it feels like to be white in the West. To move through the world feeling visually unremarkable.

Last week in Pleiku, I sometimes felt less confident when I was around my local contact — a 6-foot-2 white American cellist who actually knew basic Vietnamese phrases. Something about standing next to him instantly exposed me as a foreigner. I found myself wanting to distance myself from him, even though he has lived in Vietnam for several years and was objectively far more competent here than I was.

Now that I’m solo again, life in Da Nang/Hoi An is starting to feel normal.

Waking up at 5 am for community beach workouts becomes normal. Taking afternoon naps becomes normal. Because most humans cannot function in this heat in the afternoon. Getting regular foot massages becomes normal because you walk everywhere in this heat. And when I am too tired, I can always take a $2 Grab ride (Uber of Southeast Asia), and that is normal now.

The locals are also unbelievably friendly. They smile constantly. Nobody feels menacing in the way people sometimes do back in New York. You can walk around at 2 am without feeling afraid. And that is my new normal.

My newest fear is no longer crossing the street.

My newest fear is getting too comfortable with this new lifestyle.

Temporary luxury is achievable with my U.S. dollar advantage. And to borrow the words of some rich people, I feel “comfortable” here in Vietnam, like I have never felt before. (Of course, minus the extreme heat.)

So far, all of the local hotels (as opposed to big Western chains like Sheraton) and homestays have been absolutely beautiful—modern, stylish, and very Pinterest-worthy. Many of them come with bathrobes and slippers, all for about what a Motel 6 costs back home. Some even have huge bathtubs, though I haven't actually used them. When it's 90 degrees outside, I've been jumping into a swimming pool almost every day.

Services in Vietnam have been remarkable. Every staff member seems genuinely kind and thoughtful. At one hotel, a bell attendant brought my bags to my room and removed his shoes before stepping inside. Small gestures like that make you feel special. And there is no tipping here, which makes the level of service even more surprising.

In Vietnam, I also feel taller because I actually am taller relative to the local population. I never have to ask someone to reach for something on a shelf at a store. The bike I ride here lets me reach the ground easily. I even had to raise the seat a bit. At 5'3", this may be the first time in my life that I have felt tall.

My journey has just begun, but I am already afraid of how I might feel when I return to the United States. I am not ready to give up these delicious coffee drinks —often at the most glorious locations such as Tiệm cà phê Ngày Bình Yên- a hilltop cafe with panoramic view of rice fields and cityscape of Pleiku.

And the fact that I enjoy feeling “tall and rich” so much makes me question myself.

Tonight, I’m going somewhere very unfamiliar. I have seen the people many times and heard about them for years, but I have never stepped inside. I’ve been nervous about it all day.

It will probably be uncomfortable.

But at least it will be Kosher.

Anyway, more from Việt Nam soon.

Hẹn gặp lại.

Sweating doesn’t come easily for me, even in a sauna. But walking around District 1 of Ho Chi Minh City at 11 a.m. opened up my pores immediately. I got drenched in my own sweat — and not just regular hot-weather sweat. This included the cold sweat from almost getting hit by a motorcycle every time I crossed the street.

Back home in the U.S., I cannot afford to get hit by a motorcycle. The healthcare costs from a serious injury could ruin me financially. So yes, cold sweat.

In the streets of HCMC, people assume I am local — that I know how to cross through the endless sea of motorcycles and Grab taxis. The language, the smells, the sounds, even the movement of traffic all feel completely foreign to me, yet nobody seems to notice.

Every time I find a white person, I gravitate toward them — they make me feel a bit at ease. Somehow, I started identifying myself as white in my head here. “I am one of them,” I wanted to scream while standing frozen at intersections.

But one thing I noticed this week had nothing to do with traffic.

People here are obsessed with my age.

The ones who Googled me tell me how young I look for my age. The ones who don’t know my age simply ask me directly: “How old are you?”

At first, it feels slightly strange, especially coming from a Western society where age is treated as sensitive information, and ageism is considered a serious social issue.

But in Vietnam, age is actually important information people need in everyday life.

In my case, very young people and older individuals never ask. Young people know I am an older lady, and older people know that I am at least younger than themselves. But the ones in their 30s and 40s always wonder. How old is Meg?

Are people here obsessed with youth or appearance or age in general?

But then I realized something else.

In Vietnamese, people address you as either an older or younger sibling — a sister or brother. If they can’t figure out your age, then they literally don’t know how to place you in relation to themselves, even if they are speaking to you entirely in English.

I don’t love thinking about my age, and I truly fear how aging affects the way people see me as a woman and as a person. But spending even a week in Vietnam is changing something in me.

First, I never feel offended when people ask my age here because I understand the reason behind it. They are asking because they are unsure. If they were completely certain I was older than them, they would never need to ask in the first place. So the fact that they hesitate is, strangely enough, a little flattering.

I don’t know if I will stop caring about my age after this trip, but at least, I have one takeaway.

Age doesn’t have to feel like a universal judgment. It is often just relative to the person speaking to you.

And somehow, that makes me feel a little closer to the people I am talking with.

More UnKosher Notes from Việt Nam coming soon.

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The words “developing” and “developed” countries feel deceptive to me today. Some developing countries feel stagnant, while some developed countries feel exhausted.

Once a country is officially develop-ED, what happens next? Does it keep improving forever? Or does it slowly shift from expansion to maintenance?

Vietnam, on the other hand, feels deeply develop-ING. Even from afar, I sense momentum there — energy, construction, ambition, movement. It reminds me a little of the Japan I grew up in during the 1980s and ’90s, when everything seemed to be getting cleaner, faster, smaller, more efficient, and somehow more optimistic almost overnight.

For its Individual Fellowship, the Asian Cultural Council allows artists to conduct field studies in any country in Asia. I could have chosen Japan for comfort and familiarity, or countries like South Korea, Singapore, or Malaysia, where navigating daily life would have been easier. I could have chosen more typical destinations for musicians as well — Indonesia or India.

Instead, I chose Vietnam. Here are my top five reasons why.

No. 1 — Where the grant stretches furthest 💸

For the first time in my life, I would quite literally become a millionaire, at least in Vietnamese dong. Everyone loves Singapore, and I do too. But if the grant cap is the same for any country, choosing an expensive country makes little sense. Writing grants is hard enough, and I didn’t want my actual studies to be burdened by having to stretch every dong.

No. 2 — Geography and climate 🌊

We’ve all seen these pictures of the rice fields, beautiful Halong Bay, or the beaches along the coastline. It’s a beautiful country with so many different landscapes.

No. 3 — Food 🍜☕🥖

Ever since Saigon Grill on the Upper West Side closed, I have been emotionally unwell. It was the perfect student restaurant: cheap, fast, and always delicious, no matter how broke you were. Now imagine that actually in Saigon.

No. 4 — Music 🎶

Without revealing too much, a Jarai instrument maker has already built an instrument for me to bring home. I’ll study it seriously, practice respectfully, and then eventually do what composers always do: steal the sound. Not imitate it. Not preserve it. Transform it into my own language.

No. 5 — Momentum.

Vietnam seems like a country that is still actively becoming something right now. There is construction everywhere: young people, noise, movement, ambition. And while I know some people would find that exhausting, I strangely find it energizing.

And that probably has something to do with when and where I happened to grow up.

Growing up in Japan during the 1980s, I witnessed something remarkable. Japan wasn’t always clean, efficient, technologically advanced, and cute.

The Japan I grew up in was changing visibly and rapidly in front of my eyes. The national railway system was privatized and became JR, and suddenly everything seemed to improve almost overnight. Train stations that used to feel dark and grimy became cleaner, brighter, and filled with shops, restaurants, and beautifully designed public spaces. Even the public bathrooms transformed from places you wanted to escape as quickly as possible into spaces cleaner and more comfortable than many hospitals and restaurants I encounter in New York today.

The trains became more frequent while fares went down at the same time. The seats were heated, cushioned, and covered in colorful velvet fabric with remarkable attention to detail. Companies competed aggressively on convenience, efficiency, packaging, speed, customer satisfaction, and innovation, as if the entire country had collectively decided that making daily life smoother had become a national sport. “Kaizen” wasn’t just a business term; it genuinely felt like the atmosphere of the country.

We were raised with strict discipline, intense academic competition, and very high expectations, but underneath all of that there was also a sense of optimism and forward motion that is difficult to explain to people who did not experience it. By the time I was born, Japan had already become the world’s second-largest economy, and being Japanese during that era carried a certain confidence internationally.

I arrived in NYC in 1994 as a classical violin student, but could not ignore New York and the environment I was in outside of Juilliard. There was a Tower Records right next door where I’d check out the latest releases by artists ranging from Chibo Matto to Chick Corea to Joshua Redman. Living near Lincoln Center and taking the 1 train downtown to the Village to go to Smalls, Sweet Rhythm, Blue Note, the 55 Bar, etc., I felt like I was in a movie.

I took full advantage of being young, Japanese, female, and curious about jazz. After midnight, I would hang out at places like the Village Vanguard, drinking and acting somewhere between an eager student and an unapologetic groupie, and life was outrageously fun and exciting.

The timing also worked absurdly well for me economically. Round-trip tickets between JFK and Narita were sometimes around $580, Juilliard’s annual tuition was roughly $12,000, and the Japanese yen was unbelievably strong. At one point, the exchange rate was around ¥79–¥80 per dollar, compared to roughly ¥160 today.

Being Japanese in New York during the 1990s genuinely felt powerful. Japanese culture had enormous prestige internationally at the time, and Japan itself still felt slightly intimidating and financially out of reach to many Americans unless work or touring brought them there. High schools offered Japanese language classes, jazz musicians toured Japan constantly—I’ve had full conversations in Japanese with musicians like and John Zorn, both of whom are fluent.

A strong Japan, affordable education, a booming New York jazz scene, physical CD culture, and a city still overflowing with energy somehow all lined up at exactly the right moment in my life. Of course, part of it was simply being young too.

But living in New York today simply does not feel the same to me anymore.

Vietnam is obviously neither Japan of the 1980s and ’90s nor the U.S., and historically speaking, both countries carry complicated relationships with 600 × 376Vietnam. But Vietnamese people are very welcoming and curious. They give off vibes that are far more optimistic than the average New Yorker.

Yes, there will probably be endless motorcycles, construction noise, humidity, and chaos.

But I would rather hear those noises than the quieter feeling of stagnation. I want to feel that heat

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“Pretty Privilege and the Myth of “Women” addressed women’s beauty and aging back in February.” Last week, I wrote “Why I’m Leaving,” about the collapse of the American Dream as I experienced it, and my decision to spend two months in Vietnam.

This is Part 2 of Why I’m Leaving. This is about my music.

Some readers assumed I ended a friendship over a single incident. That’s not accurate. It was a pattern with Stephen—and his view on immigration was not unique.

In Pleiku, Vietnam, I am already referred to simply as “American.” In the United States, I am still Japanese or Asian—and likely always will be.

So who am I, really—Meg Okura, or Megumi?

You can call it a midlife crisis or untreated menopause. But it’s an existential one—and it has now reached my music.

For the last two years, my daughter has had Uber Teen, DoorDash, and a debit card we refill. I’m no longer the “Mommy” I once was.

I have had a chance to look back—at my life decisions, family, career, and religion, culture, and belonging. I’m trying to decide what to do with my career and the time I have left.

The first phase: concert violinist and evangelical Christian musician.
The second: sideman—absorbing everything, moving between worlds, one week Michael Brecker, the next Elliott Sharp.
The third: bandleader and composer, building my own work.
And now, I’m entering a fourth phase, without a clear definition.

If I had the choice, I would write symphonic jazz. Writing for the 68-piece Symphonic Jazz Orchestra in Long Beach, California, last year, as the winner of the George Duke Commissioning Prize, changed something fundamental. For the first time, I could write exactly what I heard—no approximation, no substitution. If I heard French horn, I wrote French horn. If I needed timpani, it was there.

But that is not the reality. I cannot sustain a career on symphonic jazz alone. I am also a violinist. Last November, I recorded a trio set at the Stone with Angelica Sanchez and (out August 14 from ). Working in small groups, whether in experimental jazz or classical chamber music, is something I will not give up. In January, I had a chamber premiere with the AdaMa Quartet, and returning to the classical world—as both composer and violinist, performing new works—is my new passion and a full circle.

The problem is not that I am doing too many different things. I like being prolific. But I want to be able to do everything I do without the projects canceling each other out.

So why Vietnam?

Not to collect more influences, but to remove everything that is not essential. It is the unknown, and at the same time, a return to Asia.

New York is no longer what I believed it was.
My daughter no longer needs me the way she once did.
I can’t afford to wait much longer.
I need a reset in my music.

I’m American now—I can leave and come back. This time, with less baggage.

If not now, when?

Next month, I’m headed to Asia. Solo. At least until the chorus comes in.

I came to America with a student visa, a violin, and a red Samsonite, and I used the violin as my way in—not like most people who come to study music. I came to escape pressure to conform in my home country of Japan. What I saw in America was freedom, boldness, and a kind of happiness rooted in independence and diversity of thought.

My first twenty years here were everything I had hoped for. I got to live in what felt like a kind of utopia—New York, jazz, culture. From a small town in Japan to the biggest city in America. From a classical violinist to a jazz composer and improviser. From a born-again Christian to an atheist Jew by choice. Marriage, a child, and a condo in Manhattan that we bought with our hard-earned money. For a long time, I thought it all worked well together - all of my decisions in my life made perfect sense, created deep and beautiful harmony.

Then, over the last ten years, what used to feel like freedom—my perfectly engineered identity—became a liability. In any room defined by a single identity, my presence was a problem.

At my birthday gathering in our home—a single-family house in the Bronx, our American Dream—a longtime family friend said something I could not ignore.

Stephen, a white man from a Christian missionary family who grew up in Japan with my father, told me he was against the EB-1 pathway—the process I went through to obtain permanent residency, and later, to become a citizen, ultimately giving up my Japanese passport.

The EB-1 is an employment-based immigration category for individuals with extraordinary ability, demonstrated through sustained national or international recognition.

Stephen said he supported those who entered the country illegally, but was vehemently against this process.

Then he stood up and announced to the room how ‘beautiful’ it was to see Sam, a Black musician, playing together with white musicians, and that he is witnessing something profound.

I pulled him aside and told him that the musicians we work with are our peers and our friends, and that they respect us as musicians, not despite or because of our race.

He insisted the moment was profound, saying, “All of my Black friends are in jail.”

What he meant was that the only Black people in his life were those he encountered through prison outreach.

He was the only family friend we had in America—someone my parents trusted. But this was the end of the conversation—and the relationship.

My parents understood why I ended it. What they could not understand was his position. To them, it made no sense to oppose a legal pathway based on documented achievement while supporting those who had not followed the law.

It felt like a rejection of everything they had sacrificed—years of investment in my education and my life—and of the values they held sacred.

For years, I had already felt something changing.

The sense of utopia I once found in jazz—a space where we respected and admired one another as individuals, while acknowledging history and difference—had been fading.

Or maybe people were never that accepting. Maybe I had been naïve to think they were.

It was not only in distant spaces. It was within relationships I had trusted. I had believed we were known for who we are—our work, our lives, our choices. Instead, I saw how easily everything we had built was erased, reduced to race.

And this is why I had to leave—to be somewhere I was just a human, not a race.

I began looking for a way out—fellowships, residencies, tour grants.

Hawai‘i came first.

Through Jazz Road Tours, I performed in O‘ahu and Maui with pianist Kevin Hays.

In O‘ahu, being Asian and American was unremarkable. I looked like I belonged. English and Japanese were both around me—two languages I speak.

For once, I was just a person.

The next step is Vietnam.

Through the Asian Cultural Council Fellowship, I will spend two months conducting field study with the Jarai in the central highlands and the H’mong in the north.

There, I will look like them. But will that help, be neutral, or work against me? Will shared DNA matter at all? Will I be able to build meaningful relationships, to have conversations that connect us?

When I think of this field study in Vietnam, the outward purpose is clear: research, collaboration, and learning.

And the place itself—mountains, ocean, rice fields, unfamiliar scales and sounds, the food, the chaos of motorcycles—you cannot ignore that.

But that is not the real reason I am going.

The real reason is to put myself in a completely unfamiliar situation. I won’t understand the language. I won’t know the culture. I may look similar, but I don’t know if that will help at all. I will be entering spaces that are clearly not mine— visiting ethnic minority villages as an outsider.

Even in cities like Hanoi and Saigon, how will I be read when history is part of the context—Japan in the Second World War, America in the Vietnam War? I will go to museums, sites, and what remains.

I expect it to be uncomfortable. It needs to be. That is the only way I can grow.

I hope this trip will change me.

I will see what America feels like when I return—whether the chorus sounds different.

Despite what the Times chose to highlight—the divisions, the politics, the mayor—something else happened in that room.

Yes, the mayor made a brief appearance at the beginning, offering remarks before leaving. He was not part of the Seder that unfolded afterward.

During my presentation, I performed a piece I created for the evening, weaving together Go Down Moses and Ma Nishtana (“Why is this night different?”).

But at a certain point, I felt the need to go further.

I began quoting the melody of Oseh Shalom. And then I heard voices rising from the audience.

They were more than ready.

And when their voices came together—not in harmony, but in unison—I realized that we can do this. We can be one again, despite our differences.

I love harmony. But in that moment, I felt how overrated it can be. Harmony can be beautiful, even seductive. But unison is one. And unison is power.

Whatever divides us, there is something deeper that remains: a shared, human prayer for peace.

Chag Sameach to those who are celebrating Passover. And to those who are not—I’m especially grateful you’re here.

Happy birthday, Mike!

I can’t imagine you “resting” in peace. That just doesn’t feel right.
You’d be shedding. Still searching, still pushing, still finding new ways through the horn. Or in the studio, producing—probably already exploring A.I.

And at the same time, I can’t really picture you any older than the last time we played together—with your Quindectet at Zankel Hall.
Your kids, Sam and Jessica, were still kids then.

I had the privilege of touring with Michael Brecker’s Quindectet, and that experience had a profound impact on me. But in some ways, I had suppressed that part of my life for almost twenty years—because the loss was too painful.

Fresh out of school, I felt like a child in that band, surrounded by some of the greatest musicians—far more experienced than I was. I sat close enough to hear not just Mike’s notes, but his breaths, to see his sweat.

When I took a solo, I could feel his presence—almost protective. Encouraging. Like a teacher, or an uncle. I was never a “colleague” to him, and that was exactly right.

I had assumed I would grow into that band over time—in the old-school way, by being in it. After the Japan tour, some of my closest colleagues told me my playing had changed. I think it had. And I believed the Quindectet would continue for decades.

Where else does a violinist get to blow every night in a large jazz ensemble, and spend the rest of the set inside that sound?

After Michael Brecker’s passing, I almost lived as if it hadn’t happened— because I had wanted it to last much longer.

Today, I’m beginning to bring that part of my life back.

I’m developing a new project—The Michael Brecker Quindectet Legacy Project (working title) —centered on the Wide Angles music.

This is being developed with the awareness and support of Susan Brecker, whose care for Michael’s legacy continues to guide this process. A number of musicians from the original touring ensemble have expressed strong interest in being part of this—Alex Sipiagin, Robin Eubanks, Roger Rosenberg, Charles Pillow, Dan Willis, Boris Kozlov, Daniel Sadownick, Dave Eggar, among others.

But then there is a giant elephant in the room—the tenor chair. That’s who will step into the role Michael defined.

It will be thoughtfully curated for each performance—inviting leading tenor players to engage this repertoire in their own voice while staying rooted in his.

Conversations are already underway around the tenor chair and an initial multi-night run in New York, as this begins to take shape.

The intention is to bring this body of work back into the present moment.

If this speaks to you, I’d love to hear from you.

More here:
https://www.megokura.com/quindectet-project

— Meg

Even within a single life, the experience of being a woman varies. I have been treated very differently depending on where I was geographically, culturally, and historically, and even depending on my physical state at a given time. Culture, religion, social environment, age, health, weight, and even what I was wearing all affected how I was treated.

When I was growing up in Japan in the 1980s and 1990s, many people commented on how beautiful I was. As a child, I noticed how differently people treated me compared to my sister, and I remember feeling bad for her, even though I had done nothing wrong. At the time, I already sensed that something about it wasn’t right. Looking back now, it feels more troubling to me. I experienced what people now call “pretty privilege.” A stranger once stepped off a train, went to a kiosk, and came back with a bouquet of lollipops known as “Chupa Chups.” I understood early on that attention came with both rewards and risks—boys and men could be unusually kind, or they could cross boundaries, and girls could respond with jealousy or cruelty. I am grateful that my sister was spared from this.

Back in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, I did a great deal of session work in New York. At the time, there was no visual component—no videos, no social media presence—yet when I looked around the string sections, most of the women were very beautiful, while many of the men were older and overweight, and in one memorable case, even drunk. It made me wonder what role appearance played, even in spaces where there were no visuals at all. I never quite figured out where I stood in that spectrum.

Over the last three decades, I continued working in the United States and occasionally overseas. I do think I may have benefited from how I looked at certain points, but it was never in a way that felt defining. It seemed more like a matter of degree—some women clearly benefited much more, and I was aware of that difference. Over time, especially in recent years, I have lived more in what my teenage daughter calls the “mid” category.

I also heard stories from colleagues whose experiences made the power of beauty unmistakable. Some would walk into a store intending to buy something and leave without paying because the staff insisted on giving it to them. It didn’t stop at small gestures—there were stories of free studio time, apartments, photo shoots, and international travels. I had my own versions of this, but mostly in Japan. I once asked my husband if anything like that had ever happened to him. He said no, never.

Even knowing that I needed to build value in the U.S. beyond my looks, it is hard to ignore how powerful a woman’s beauty can be—men forgetting appointments, money, precious things they would normally never let slip. It’s not surprising that beauty can open doors to wealth and opportunity, including marriage. It reflects an ecosystem we live in, shaped at least in part by human biology.

Several years ago, I was asked to provide music for a wedding ceremony at Temple Emanu-El for a couple in their late seventies. They had known each other in high school but had never really dated. Life took them in different directions, and decades later, both single again, they reconnected and fell in love. What struck me most was not the fact that they were getting married, but how they looked at each other. It felt as though they were in love for the first time. He gazed at Jane in a way that suggested he was remembering exactly how he had felt when they were seventeen, as if he could hardly believe that he had finally married her after all those years. He looked at her as though she were something sacred, almost like a goddess. Jane herself was radiant. She wore a long-sleeved, light beige sequined cocktail dress, and there was a quiet confidence and warmth about her that filled the bima (stage). He was tall, old, and probably very rich—and none of it mattered. What they saw in each other seemed to exist outside of time.

There was something almost simple about their love in their seventies. But in midlife, it becomes far more complicated.

Our body tells us, “it’s over.”

It’s not abstract—our reproductive system shuts down, completely, while men are still functioning. Many are thriving—more successful, more settled, more at ease, often shaped by the women beside them—and yet not aware enough to notice what those women are going through.

That ability was part of what made us women—and when it’s gone, it leaves a crack in that identity. One person goes on. The other is left alone with something invisible and definitely irreversible. And when that gap goes unrecognized, it quietly erodes a relationship.

That shift in how our looks operate over time is something I’ve come to understand more personally in recent years—through a chronic disease that changed my appearance to the point that I could no longer recognize myself, and through a medication that took away my perfect pitch—the only way I had ever heard everything.

I’m not ready to write about that yet. But I will.

Have you noticed Pamela Anderson lately? For many of us, she will always be that image from Baywatch—the blonde, the body, the symbol. And yet, what I’ve been seeing in the last several years feels like a completely different person: visiting Julian Assange in the embassy, speaking thoughtfully in interviews, and now showing up to red-carpet events without makeup. I was taken aback by how different she looked, but also by the confidence behind it—a deliberate shift away from perfection toward something more internal. She is still feminine, still composed, but the center of gravity feels different. I don’t think this kind of grounded and earned beauty is something an 18-year-old can pull off.

With age—and with my disease affecting my appearance—the loss of conventional beauty and youth became harder to reconcile. I wanted to be valued for something deeper—for the beauty and substance I could create, something that could last beyond even my own presence on earth.

That is partially what drew me further into composition. It wasn’t only about expression—though there were things I needed to say that a single melodic line on the violin could not hold. It was also a shift in what I wanted my work to be. Composition allowed me to create something that could exist without me. I am already beginning to see that in my chamber piece Phantasmagoria, which has been performed across the country without me. There is something quietly reassuring in that.

It made me realize that being seen is temporary, but what we create and give can remain. How we are seen and treated at any given moment matters—but it cannot define our worth. We cannot force others to see us the way we want to be seen, so we grow into a kind of radiance that is noticed by those who are able to see it.

I remember once saying to my husband, half-jokingly, that maybe he should go find a younger woman—a graduate student or something.

He looked at me and said, “But you ARE the graduate student. That’s who you were when I met you.”

I don’t see her anymore. Not when I look in the mirror. But somehow, he still does. And that gave me more comfort than I expected.

And perhaps we underestimate this, but I believe there are many men—husbands—who are capable of seeing and choosing that kind of beauty, the kind that comes with time and integrity, and still seeing the woman they first fell in love with.

And I find myself hoping that someday, I will be seventy, radiant like Jane, being looked at with that same kind of admiration—by an old, bald husband who is seventy-nine.

You don’t have to be young forever. You just have to be young once.

And this story isn’t over. I’m still in the middle of it, still trying to understand who I am and where I belong—how to keep building while constantly pushing against how I’m seen.

“Will You Hear My Voice” from ISAIAH (2026)

Women composers in jazz are not rare, and excellence was never the surprising part.

The real challenge, for some of us, is simply surviving long enough to be here. Talent was never the obstacle. The challenge was survival outside of music.

Yet, success in public is only one part of the story. What people rarely see are the private battles that shape who survives long enough to create anything at all.

By the age of eight, something had already happened that no child should ever experience. It took place in a classroom at a public school—not by one person, but by five, and not by an adult but by other eight-year-olds. The school did nothing. I could not tell my parents for years; the fear and shame were overwhelming. What happened that day marked me for life, and the wound never healed.

You would think I could have looked for guidance where I had been taught to look: church. Yet the church was not a place where this kind of suffering was addressed. Instead, it was a place where sin and forgiveness were discussed constantly, and the only lesson that seemed to apply to me was the obligation to forgive. Forgiveness was not presented as a choice but as a command; if someone harmed you, you were expected to forgive them. As a child I tried repeatedly to force myself to forgive what had happened, believing for years that the failure was mine—that I lacked the faith or spiritual strength required to do what I had been taught was necessary. But something inside me always knew that forcing forgiveness for something like this was fundamentally wrong.

Around the age of nine or ten, I understood that I had a choice. I could end my life and end the pain, but doing so would do nothing to address the rage that had taken hold of me. Instead, I chose the rage. If I could not punish anyone directly, I would take revenge in another way: I would live, grow up, and become strong enough and successful enough that one day I could expose what had been hidden. I also understood that the worst thing I could imagine had already happened, and that realization gave me a strange kind of clarity—nothing that came afterward would surpass it. From that point forward, simply continuing to live, study, and build a life became its own form of resistance. Survival did not erase the wound, and it did not make the experience meaningful or justified, but it made one thing possible: the refusal to disappear.

Long before I had the words to describe what had happened, certain music resonated with me. Hearing it gave me a sense that the emotions I carried were real and justifiable, even when there was no safe place to speak about them. Music did not explain the trauma or remove it, but it allowed those feelings to exist, and in that sense, it was a way to survive.

Studying the violin also gave me something else: relentless work. Practicing for hours every day is physically painful and mentally demanding. Though not aware at the time, the discipline of violin practice gave my mind somewhere else to go. The concentration required by the instrument was so intense that it temporarily displaced the pain I carried from childhood. The instrument demanded complete attention, and that attention created distance from everything else.

Decades later, I realized that survival is not only about enduring the past; it is also about protecting the future. When my daughter was about five years old, we were riding the subway together when a man casually said to me, “You are so beautiful.” Afterward she asked, with complete seriousness, “Was that a compliment or harassment?” I remember being struck by the absurdity of the question and the world that produced it. Children are already trying to decode rules about how women are supposed to exist in public spaces. In that moment, I realized how different her life had been from mine. She could ask the question with curiosity rather than fear because she had been protected from the kinds of harm that surrounded my childhood. That difference mattered to me more than anything else. It meant I had done my job. The cycle was not repeated.

Strength does not always appear on the cover of DownBeat. Many women in music are recognized and celebrated, and they deserve that recognition. But Women’s History Month should not only be about the women whose achievements are visible. Strength is not always loud, visible, or triumphant; sometimes it simply means continuing to exist, building a life, protecting the next generation, and creating something meaningful even when no one is watching.

The fact that this music exists at all—these particular notes and sounds that might never have existed—is itself a consequence of survival.

ISAIAH is here now. “Will You Hear My Voice”?

She replied, “Art has no right or wrong notes.”

I was stunned. I told her that whatever she thought about art, this exercise absolutely had right and wrong notes. As you may have guessed, she did not become a concert pianist. Today, she is a track and field athlete. In track, there is no philosophical debate. You run. You see your result. You train to be better.

Music, on the other hand, has interpretation, nuance, aesthetics, politics, and perception. Over time, different attitudes towards criticism produce different trajectories.

Years ago, an adult beginner told me, “I can play this piece perfectly if it wasn’t for the metronome. The metronome messes me up.” She was 100% serious. The tool designed to help her rhythmically align became her enemy.

Obviously, this example is extreme, but I have heard other more sophisticated versions of that sentence from seasoned musicians many times:

“The critic doesn’t understand.”
“The scene is political.”
“The chart is bad.”

Sometimes these things are true. But over time, I’ve observed two dominant attitudes that lead to very different trajectories. Recently, I found myself inside that dynamic.

As I wrote here, during the week of my album release, I received a less-than-ideal review of ISAIAH in DownBeat. I wrote about it while performing four entirely different programs and three religious services, as well as a trip to perform in Michigan that same week. My piece was not a dismissal of the critic. It was a reflection on how I kept moving forward under pressure. But coping in the moment does not necessarily mean not revisiting the critique later. I value criticism. I don’t always respond that way at first, but with time, I choose to engage it more seriously.

I think of it as calibrating versus deflecting. Calibrators are open to criticism. Criticism is uncomfortable, sometimes painful. But calibrators ask, “Is there something here that might be useful?” Even if the delivery hurt, a calibrator looks for what might help. Then they adjust.

Deflectors treat criticism as an attack. They look for immediate relief. “It’s just their opinion…They don’t get my music.” Compliments are absorbed, while criticism is reframed as politics or worse, ignorance.

The same person can move between calibration and deflection at different stages. Hungry young musicians often absorb everything but later become rigid once they accumulate status. These are not permanent identities. They are attitudes, and I’ve been under the spell of each at different times. I was a deflector last week. Now I’m considering what I might do differently, based on that same review.

Early in my career, in a high-profile ensemble, I misunderstood a social hierarchy and unintentionally signaled disrespect. When confronted, I was defensive. I gave a half-hearted apology because I genuinely didn’t understand what I had done wrong. That defensiveness likely cost me opportunities. For years I told myself it was political and unfair.

Over time, especially after I became a parent, I began to understand what I had failed to see about perception and group dynamics. I eventually felt real remorse and apologized sincerely to the musicians involved. We are fine now. But the consequences were real. My trajectory shifted. I might have made more money or had a different career if I had handled that situation differently. At the same time, losing those opportunities pushed me harder into building my own projects. The path changed. Not good or bad. Just different.

I once watched a musician spend decades deflecting lessons. She prioritized immediate comfort and dismissal over calibration. Over time, her need to protect herself from discomfort prevented growth. The career she envisioned never materialized.

I have worked with musicians who have prioritized a personal aesthetic over playing the parts correctly because they are too busy re-harmonizing chords on the fly. When accuracy was requested, it was deflected; perceived as a suppression of their individuality. I was sometimes accused of being too harsh, when trying to help young players.

In sports, you can’t argue with the stopwatch. In music, it’s a bit more complicated. Calibrators pause, extract what is useful, and adjust. Deflectors are not always displaying weakness or myopia. Sometimes they’re exercising discernment. No critic (or any other person, for that matter) could possibly be fully informed in the life experience or influences of the performer or composer. Thus, not every opinion deserves equal consideration. The difference for the artist is knowing when you are protecting your ego — and when you are protecting your standards.

When someone writing for a publication critiques my work, I shouldn’t dismiss it completely. Anyone entrusted to cover music for a publication like DownBeat likely hears more music from more disparate sources in a year than most musicians. I may not agree with everything, but I am willing to consider — even the suggestion to “edit down” — and see what happens. Like my daughter, I can calibrate and train.

https://jazzgallery.org/calendar/meg-okura-feb-19-2026

I paid each of the musicians in this “dazzling band” — DownBeat, March 2026 — one million dollars to say nice things.

Endorsement happens on stage. A composition on paper is silent; it only lives when musicians bring it to life. What happens on stage isn’t transactional. It’s listening, trust, and risk.

A short, unreleased excerpt from the album — Randy Brecker on “African Skies.”

African Skies (by Michael Brecker, arr. by Meg Okura)

“A wonderful, spitting Anne Drummond flute solo” –DownBeat (March 2026)

, pianist

Rebecca Patterson, trombone & bass trombone

“gorgeously shared solo by trumpeter David Smith”- DownBeat, March 2026

Evan Gregor, bass

Tomorrow (02/19/26)
Meg Okura & Pan Asian Chamber Jazz Ensemble
featuring Randy Brecker
The Jazz Gallery

https://jazzgallery.org/calendar/meg-okura-feb-19-2026

Three days ago, a week before my album release show, I received the review of my new album ISAIAH in DownBeat. For years, being reviewed there was a dream of mine. Thousands of jazz albums are released every year. Very few are reviewed in those pages. So yes, it matters.

But what do you do when the review isn’t glowing?

There were quotable segments. But the tone was as cold as the weather last week in Michigan.

For years, I’ve been fortunate — strong reviews, major competition wins, commissions, and grants. Some of the very pieces on this album have already received major composition honors, including the ISJAC (International Society of Jazz Arrangers and Composers) Fundamental Freedoms Award and the Symphonic Jazz Orchestra George Duke Commissioning Prize. After that kind of momentum, you almost forget that a critic’s job is not to cheerlead.

I’d be lying if I said it didn’t sting. It did. Because I do care about DownBeat. And Maria Schneider is on the cover.

Then I looked at my calendar. Two string quartet concerts this weekend. The album release at The Jazz Gallery with twelve musicians, including Randy Brecker. Three days later, a trio concert in Kalamazoo, Michigan. And in between, three Shabbat services at two synagogues. If I let one person’s reaction destabilize me, I’m not just bruising my ego — I’m risking multiple performances and the work of a lot of other people.

You’re allowed to feel disappointed. You’re not allowed to spiral. I spent about two minutes feeling down, not two days.

And this would still be true even if my calendar were empty — the rule would be the same. I don’t get to crawl back into bed and eat ice cream and call my mother — even if that’s exactly what I feel like doing. I get up and do my work. And yes, I’d probably allow myself a little more ice cream than usual.

Understand what a review is. It’s one person’s aesthetic response, written for readers. It is not a blueprint for your next album. It’s not a verdict on your musical career.

And you can read it carefully. You respect the time they took — an hour of listening, more for writing — and you also remember how many years it took to make the album. You consider whether there is something structurally true in it. And then you decide what to do with that information— just not the week of your album release.

So for this week, I just take the strongest phrases and run with them. And for the artists, that’s exactly what the reviews are for anyway.

My friend and co-producer for the ISAIAH, Remy Le Boeuf, once received a brutal review. He posted it on Facebook. Dozens of people commented, engaged, and they all laughed. He kept going. It probably stung a bit. But the ability to laugh at something that doesn’t go your way is a great skill. He just won a Grammy last week. One review — glowing, skeptical, or harsh — doesn’t define the work or its trajectory. It doesn’t erase years of building. You keep building. You keep leading. You keep writing what you actually mean.

The word “overload” was used about this album. I understand that reaction. This music is dense. It turns quickly. It refuses to behave politely. And that is exactly what I meant to do. I am not chasing “correctness” — I am constantly running from it.

Another writer once called this quality “grandiloquent beauty that transitions easily from grooves to big cascades to buoyant swing.”
— The New York Times

These compositions — with all their density intact — won major jazz composition competitions. If I had streamlined them to fit a narrower, more “standard” aesthetic, they likely would not have won in those arenas. Different evaluative systems reward different qualities.

Being stylistically “not fitting” has never been an accident. It’s actually the point.

Seth Godin () calls it the “purple cow.” I’ve just been consistent about being inconsistent. Twenty years ago, under John Zorn’s advice, I created this ensemble so I wouldn’t have to sit neatly inside one tradition. The purpose was freedom. Over the years, I’ve worked with artists as different as Lee Konitz, Vince Giordano, Michael Brecker, John Zorn, Tom Harrell, and David Bowie. I’ve led large ensembles, written chamber works, recorded intimate duo albums, toured internationally, and served as concertmaster in orchestral settings.

I’m Jewish, but I don’t play Klezmer. I grew up in Japan as part of a 0.2% Protestant minority and now live as an atheist Jew by choice, married to a Black husband in the South Bronx, where Spanish is heard every day. My daughter moves between English, Mandarin, Hebrew, Latin, French, and Spanish. She is a Japanese citizen. I am not.

None of those identities line up politely. They don’t take turns. They overlap. My music works the same way. The influences merge instead of separating cleanly. Sometimes that feels dense. Sometimes it reads as “too much.” I understand that. But it isn’t random, and it isn’t careless. It’s how I experience the world. I’m not interested in sanding that down to make it tidier.

I can write with restraint when I choose to — the duo with Kevin Hays proves that. With Angelica Sanchez, I don’t write a single note. Not one. With PACJE, I write a lot.

I don’t expect every critic to value density the same way. No one asks Philip Glass to adopt motivic development or sonata form. Different languages require different standards.

And even in a skeptical review, there were segments any composer would keep:

“Okura’s imagination is apparently limitless.”
“A masterful ear for orchestration.”
“Gil Evans-worthy orchestrations.”

I’ll take those.

If you’re curious what “overload” sounds like in person, you’re invited to the release concert of ISAIAH and the 20th anniversary of my Pan Asian Chamber Jazz Ensemble at The Jazz Gallery on Feb 19.

I hope you’ll join us. I’d love to see you there. Let’s overload the celebration with joy.

The Jazz Gallery — 1158 Broadway, 5th Floor
7pm / 9pm

Meg Okura — violin
Anne Drummond — flute
— soprano saxophone
— bass clarinet
David Smith — trumpet
Rebecca Patterson — trombone
Riza Printup — harp
John Lee — guitar
— piano
Evan Gregor — bass
Peter Kronreif — drums

Special guest:

Event details: https://jazzgallery.org/calendar/meg-okura-feb-19-2026

Here is the Bandcamp link for the album:

Before I started the Pan Asian Chamber Jazz Ensemble 20 years ago, I struggled with it. The skepticism came before I even played a note: why would you play jazz on the violin? The verdict was already in — the violin can’t swing.

Over time, I found my place. I have worked with over a dozen amazing jazz groups, including Michael Brecker’s Quindectet, Tom Harrell Chamber Ensemble and Emilio Solla y La Inestable de Brooklyn. I have been commissioned to write for a big band, symphonic jazz orchestra, as well as chamber musicians like Dave Eggar and Tasha Warren— my piece Phantasmagoria has been performed by classical groups across the country. As a composer, I finally felt whole. All the musical lives I had lived — Juilliard concertmaster, Jewish/Middle Eastern band sidewoman, jazz sidewoman — seemed to reconcile; so I thought.

Then came last week. The world premiere of my suite “Three Threads of Tekuma” (among other pieces) with the AdaMa Quartet. And I realized how much I had forgotten about being a classical violinist.

Jazz and classical are both “art music,” but the cultures are so different that the same words don’t mean the same things. The first shock was the word rehearsal. We rehearsed for what felt like an endless amount of time over two days. I appreciated it. But I kept thinking: if I ran a rehearsal like this with my band, they would leave!

In jazz, groups are leader-oriented. The leader hires musicians, prepares music, books gigs, and carries the vision. In chamber music, the goal is to realize the composer’s vision. The group exists to serve the piece, and everyone shares the responsibility — artistically and even financially — to make that happen.

Because of this, in classical music, composers are almost sacred figures. Musicians spend hours preparing before rehearsal to make the piece work, no matter how awkward or non-idiomatic it might be. In jazz, musicians immediately question the writing. They will tell you what works and what doesn’t for their instrument, without hesitation.

“Sushi Gadol” by Meg Okura; BMI New York Jazz Orchestra, feat. Ben Kono (flute solo) 06/20/2025 Symphony Space

I realized I had forgotten how much time classical players spent deciding bowings and other minute details. Up-bow, down-bow — not just for choreography, but for cohesion of sound and expression. In chamber music, the goal is a refined ensemble sound where individual tone blends into the group. In jazz, no one cares what direction your bow moves. The sound is expected to be personal, individual, and distinct. This difference in priorities becomes most clear in rhythm.

In jazz, the leader never changes. Time is steady, expected, predictable. Everything happens inside that grid. In classical music, rhythm is elastic; downbeats move with the melody. The ensemble stretches and contracts together like a rubber band. This is often the biggest hurdle when writing for and with classical ensembles.

Somewhere along the way, I didn’t just learn jazz — I transitioned into that mindset. I stopped living between two worlds and started thinking that it’s all just music. Now, I find myself learning how to be bilingual again. That realization brought me back to a memory from years ago.

During Michael Brecker Quindectet tour, the first violinist once called me into her hotel room. She told me she was upset that I never sat with the string section at meals. I would naturally drift toward the jazz musicians, but I hadn’t realized I was breaking an unwritten rule.

At the time, I thought it was about professional manners. Last week, I realized it was about culture and belonging, as the AdaMa Quartet ate every meal together between rehearsals.

Now, I find myself walking back into the chamber music world with a very different kind of strength. Not as the classical violinist I once was, and not as a visitor from jazz, but as someone who carries both languages fluently — as a composer and violinist.

With AdaMa, we are performing my pieces alongside works by other composers such as Daniel Akiva and George N. Gianopoulos. We are planning performances in Asia, Israel, and New York.

I spent so many years trying to find where I belonged — in jazz, in classical music, on the Downtown scene, the big band scene, and in Judaism. I worked with great musicians, learned different languages, and lived in many worlds.

I now realize I wasn’t searching for a place in any of them. I was searching for my own voice. And that voice was never going to come from choosing one world over another. It comes from all of them.

This time, I know exactly where I’m sitting.

“II. Echo of Pizmon” from Three Threads of Tekuma by Meg Okura; AdaMa Quartet, 01/29/2026 Cook Recital Hall Michigan State University

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What’s really unique about AdaMa Quartet is the instrumentation. It’s a quartet of clarinet, bass clarinet, violin, and cello — almost like a duo of winds and strings. What’s really special, though, is that even though this is a new ensemble, I’ve worked with Tasha and Dave on many projects over the years. With Dave in particular, we go back to the early 2000s and have shared well over a hundred performances and recordings together, including touring with Michael Brecker, so there’s a very deep musical trust already built in. And this is my first time working with Guy, which is exciting because we get to discover a new musical chemistry inside the group.

What I love about playing in this group is that I get to play other composers’ music. I get to be a classical violinist and fully dedicate myself to that role when we’re not playing my compositions. I also love playing with chamber musicians of this caliber, performing modern music together.

My world premiere piece is called Three Threads of Tekuma, and it’s about Jewish diaspora and musical memories from different regions and cultures. The idea of diaspora shows up in the music through grooves and scales — Ashkenazi is reflected through klezmer sounds, Sephardic through Middle Eastern elements like the maqsum rhythm and taqsim, and Mizrahi through inspiration from Yemenite music.

Because of that long history with these musicians, I was able to write certain passages specifically for them, trusting they would naturally understand the phrasing and stylistic inflections without me having to over-explain anything.

There’s a moment in the piece that really lifts everything to a climax. I built it using a jazz technique called a shout chorus — where everyone locks into a tight, unified rhythm and close voicing over a maqsum groove, creating a very powerful collective statement.

Adapting ‘Jubberish’ for this ensemble meant not just changing the orchestration, but also changing some of the structures, and forgoing of many aspects and ideas of the original Jubberish for the Pan Asian Chamber Jazz Ensemble, using the core of the piece which is the theme, and re-adapting and adding something that wasn’t there as well.

Even though this is a classical concert, I can’t help but play my own improvised cadenza instead of sticking to what’s written. I think that is okay as long as it’s in the style, but please don’t tell anybody.” “What I hope the audience listens for is the sense that this music feels both old and new at the same time — like something familiar returning in a different form. My piece is called Three Threads of Tekuma — tekuma is a Hebrew word meaning rebirth or renewal — and that’s very much the feeling here: a reminder that what we hear today is deeply connected to people, memories, and sounds that came long before us.

AdaMa Quartet
Thursday, January 29, 2026
7:30 pm
Cook Recital Hall at Michigan State University, East Lansing
Guy Yehuda (clarinet) & Tasha Warren (bass clarinet), Meg Okura (violin), Dave Eggar (cello)
Presented with support from MSU’s Serling Institute for Jewish Studies and Modern Israel

https://music.msu.edu/event/adama-quartet/

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