Join us for the world premiere screening of The Monkathon, a concert film documenting Miles Okazaki’s performance of the complete works of Thelonious Monk during a five-hour solo concert at The Jazz Gallery in New York City in 2024. This unprecedented event was filmed by director Frank Heath and transformed into a multi-part film.
The evening includes a film screening with one of the four sets from the performance, interviews with Okazaki, behind-the-scenes footage, and an overview of the entire project. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Okazaki and Heath.
The Monkathon film builds on the recording of the complete Thelonious Monk songbook that Okazaki made in 2017, during Monk’s centennial year. Upon its release in 2018, Okazaki’s 6-disc, 70-track album WORK received wide critical acclaim for its originality and audacity. Nate Chinen described it as “the six-string equivalent of a free solo climb up El Capitan.” The album landed on more than a dozen Top Ten lists for 2018, and Okazaki was voted the #1 rising star guitarist in the DownBeat Critic’s poll.
“Utterly contemporary, free from the expectations of what it means to play a guitar in a group setting — not just in jazz, but any kind.” – The New York Times
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Miles Okazaki is a NYC-based guitarist originally from Port Townsend, a small seaside town in Washington state. His touring and recording experience over three decades includes work with Kenny Barron, John Zorn, Steve Coleman, Miguel Zenón, Stanley Turrentine, Henry Threadgill, Patricia Brennan, Dan Weiss, Anthony Tidd, Adam Rudolph, Anna Webber, Matt Mitchell, Mary Halvorson, Jonathan Finlayson, Jen Shyu, Jacob Garchik, Jon Irabagon, Jane Monheit, Amir ElSaffar, Darcy James Argue, and many others. He has released 12 albums of original compositions over the last 12 years on the Sunnyside, Pi, and Cygnus labels. In 2018 Okazaki received wide critical acclaim for his six-album recording of the complete compositions of Thelonious Monk for solo guitar, an unprecedented project that Nate Chinen called “the six-string equivalent of a free solo climb up El Capitan.” In 2024 he recorded the entire songbook again from memory in a one night, five-hour concert filmed at The Jazz Gallery in NYC. In addition, Okazaki was voted the #1 rising star guitarist in the Downbeat Magazine critic’s poll, has published a book Fundamentals of Guitar on Mel Bay, teaches at Princeton University, and holds degrees from Harvard University, Manhattan School of Music, and the Juilliard School.
Frank Heath was born in 1982 in St. Joseph, Missouri. He has exhibited his work in solo shows at the Simone Subal Gallery (New York) and collaboratively at the Swiss Institute (New York); Young World (Detroit); Simone Subal Gallery (New York); Art Basel Statements (Basel); and the Videotage Gallery (Hong Kong). His work has exhibited in group shows and screenings at venues including The Kitchen (New York); International Film Festival Rotterdam, The Power Plant (Toronto); Centre Pompidou (Paris); and the High Line (New York). Heath currently lives and works in New York City.
