Results for "Large Ensembles"

Meg Okura

Born: August 9

The New York Times called her music "grandiloquent beauty that transitions easily from grooves to big cascades to buoyant swing"(Giovanni Russonello), Meg Okura is a jazz composer and violinist and the founder of the Pan Asian Chamber Jazz Ensemble based in New York. In the last decade, she has won over two dozen prizes and honors, including the 2023 ISJAC Fundamental Freedom Commission and International Women In Music’s 2023 Portland Jazz Composer’s Prize.

Over the last 18 years, her ensembles have graced iconic venues in New York, such as Birdland Jazz Club, Blue Note, Dizzy’s, and Knitting Factory, as well as the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., K.L. Jazz Festival in Malaysia, and other performances in the U.S., Israel, Serbia, and Japan. 

Large Ensembles: Is There a Place in This Large Music World?

by R.J. DeLuke
August 17, 2009

The big band in jazz has a long and glorious history. It was a prevalent form in jazz music in the '20s and '30s, comprising a substantial part of America's popular music heard on radio, spun on gramophones and record players, and enjoyed in dance halls. It gave rise to iconic band leaders like Fletcher Henderson, ...