Miles Okazaki: Miniature America
Cygnus Recordings

There might be no contemporary jazz guitarist more creatively adventurous than Miles Okazaki. Even if it's impossible to predict where this restlessly creative musician will go next, rest assured it'll be interesting. We're talking about someone, after all, who's issued both freewheeling jazz quartet albums and a six-album set of solo guitar treatments of the complete Thelonious Monk songbook. In a discography filled with surprises, Okazaki's latest might be the most unusual yet and, in some respects, the least guitar-like. Yes, Miniature America includes multiple illustrations of his six-string prowess; in this context, however, guitar functions as merely one of many elements in its twenty-two experimental vignettes. However challenging it is to pin down what Miniature America is, it's decidedly not a blowing set featuring run-throughs of “Stella By Starlight” and the like.

How the recording came into being is worth recounting. While on a summer 2022 drive from Seattle to Brooklyn with his son and dog, Okazaki mulled over a possible new album idea inspired by, first, irreverent Ken Price sculptures that seemed like they could, in Okazaki's words, “point to a model for the production of small musical objects,” and, secondly, Sol Lewitt drawings that were striking for how liberally they embraced the intervention of unpredictable variables in their formation. Said ideas crystallized into a technique involving writing instructions for the production of raw materials that could then be further shaped to reveal “hidden musical artifacts.” Adding a Cage-like dimension to the developing project, spoken recitations of numerous poems' final lines were incorporated in a way that, having been collected in a randomized manner, turned them into “found poems” (poetry aficionados might recognize the words of Dickinson, Plath, Blake, Stevens, Auden, Carroll, Bishop, and others as the album plays out).

To help the guitarist realize his vision, he invited ten colleagues to NYC's East Side Sound in December 2023, with Matt Mitchell (pianist), Anna Webber (tenor saxophone, flute), Jacob Garchik (trombones), Jon Irabagon (mezzo soprano, sopranino, and slide saxophones), Caroline Davis (alto saxophone), Patricia Brennan (vibraphone), and voice contributors Ganavya, Jen Shyu, and Fay Victor the invitees. Issued on Cygnus, the label Okazaki founded in 2020 with drummer Dan Weiss, Miniature America is not a collection of live performances but instead dense constructions that exploit the studio as a compositional tool, facilitator, and instrument. In some cases, Okazaki created “environments” wherein musicians, guided by instructions, generated detailed blocks of sound he'd then take home, remodel, and play along to. The full-colour booklet included with the release brings additional clarity in showing photos of the musicians in the studio, Price's sculptures, texts, directions, and scores.

With the majority of tracks in the one- to two-minute range (only four exceed three minutes, the longest "In the Fullness of Time” six), things move quickly. After the aptly titled “The Cocktail Party” initiates the proceedings with babbling guests serenaded by Mitchell's piano (voicing a theme that can be heard slithering through other tracks too, “The Furniture” an example), multiple elements converge in “The Funambulist,” with shards of voice, trombone, and acoustic guitar flickering together. Unusual combinations regularly emerge in these cubistic constructions, be it alto saxophone, guitar, and vibraphone in “The Funicular” or guitar, trombone, and burbling, poetry-drawling voices in “Wheel of Cloud.” Certain pieces are spotlights for individuals, “The Cavern,” for instance, a duet performance with the leader supporting Garchik; others, such as “Chutes and Ladders” and "The Firmament,” emphasize intricate ensemble interplay.

Some are delivered at a blistering pace, others languorously. In spite of the constrictions imparted by duration and compositional structure, the musicians express themselves with freedom, and consequently it's easy to identify who's playing at any given time. It hardly surprises that Webber, Davis, Mitchell, Garchik, Brennan, and Irabagon make their presences felt, and there's no shortage of Okazaki's playing either, be it on electric or acoustic (see “Venus Calling” and “Zodiacal Cloud”). The vocalists also make memorable contributions, the ululating one by Ganavya to "In the Fullness of Time” particularly powerful.

August 2024