You are on page 1of 6

7/12/2017 Trickster (2017) | MILES OKAZAKI

Navigation

MILES OKAZAKI
Guitarist, Composer, NYC

Connect:

email list: once in while updates


facebook: frequent updates
twitter: trivia, road pics
youtube: gig footage, theory deep dive
instagram: practice cam

E-mail SUBMIT

Trickster (2017)

Performers:

Miles Okazaki Guitar


Craig Taborn Piano
Anthony Tidd Bass
Sean Rickman Drums

Tracks:
Tidd, Okazaki, Rickman, Taborn.
1. Kudzu 5:21
2. Mischief 3:24
3. Box in a Box 5:47
4. Eating Earth 6:43
5. Black Bolt 2:42
6. The West 3:46
7. The Calendar 9:16
8. Caduceus 6:41
9. Borderland 1:07

Booking: USA Europe Asia


Press Photos: Solo1 Solo2 Band1 Band2 (credits: Dimitri Louis)

http://www.milesokazaki.com/albums/trickster-2017/ 1/6
7/12/2017 Trickster (2017) | MILES OKAZAKI

Reviews: (click links for full versions)

an expression of deep, systemic intrigue New York Times (live performance review)
a mature work for the ages. Pop Matters
glorious braids of melody. Pitchfork
a true concept album The Wall Street Journal
individual and distinct imagery Bandcamp Best New Jazz
a real breakthrough. JazzTimes Editors Pick
an intellectually hefty album that feels weightless Downbeat Editors Pick
beguiling new quartet album WBGO
a new reection of the musics roots in jazz, funk and blues The Los Angeles Times
autoridad y conviccin El Intruso
un disco sorprendente All About Jazz Italy
une musique intense et colore Jazz Magazine (France)
complex and grooving . . . Downbeat
latticework of bouncy rhythms Financial Times
new forms of expression JazzScene
ferocious forward momentum Textura
an eruptive guitarist Stereogum
precision oriented approach AllAboutJazz:
elaborate, internally rhyming forms NYC Jazz Record
both adventurous and accessible Improvised
elaborate layers of sound that intrigue and astound. JazzTrail:
Play it loud . . . you can dance to it! Step Tempest

Videos:

TRICKSTER Trailer TRICKSTER Trailer Trickster, Live at th

Pi Recordings Press Release:

Trickster is guitarist Miles Okazakis rst album in ve years and his much anticipated debut on Pi Recordings,
having been featured on six other releases in the labels catalog in groups led by Steve Coleman, Jonathan
Finlayson, and Dan Weiss, along with associations with other Pi artists such as Matt Mitchell, Jen Shyu, and
Amir ElSaffar. Perhaps best-known as a member of Steve Coleman and Five Elements, with whom he has
played for the last eight years, Okazaki has also built a solid reputation for himself as one of the most
adventurous composers and guitarists on the current scene. The New York Times says of Okazaki, Even by the
standard of his hyper-literate post-bop peer group, Mr. Okazaki is an unusually calculating musical thinker,
and as a guitarist, exceedingly skilled with a head for rhythmic convolution.

Originally from Port Townsend, Washington, Okazaki began playing classical guitar at age six, and was
playing regular gigs on electric guitar by age fourteen. He moved to New York after graduating from Harvard
http://www.milesokazaki.com/albums/trickster-2017/ 2/6
7/12/2017 Trickster (2017) | MILES OKAZAKI

University (he also holds degrees from Manhattan School of Music and The Juilliard School) to pursue a career
in music. His teacher on guitar at the time was Rodney Jones, who got Okazakis career in motion by
recommending him for early gigs with Stanley Turrentine, Lenny Pickett, Regina Carter, and studio session
work. He has received many awards as a guitarist including placing second in the 2005 Thelonious Monk
International Jazz Competition. Okazaki spent four years on the road with vocalist Jane Monheit and became
known as an expert vocal accompanist, but he also started to develop an experimental streak in his own music.
His rst album as a leader, Mirror (2006), received a Critics Pick in the New York Times, who called it a
work of sustained collectivity as well as deep intricacy. His second album, Generations (2009), was
described by pianist Vijay Iyer in Artforum as the sonic equivalent of Escher or Borges, but with real
emotional heft. His next album, Figurations, was selected as one of the New York Times top ten albums of
2012, described by Ben Ratliff as slowly evolving puzzles of brilliant jazz logic.

Okazaki subsequently entered a period of focused guitar study, which resulted in the book Fundamentals of
Guitar, published by Mel Bay in 2015. When he began to compose again, he went at it from a fresh
perspective, placing greater emphasis on guitar playing and improvisation. Steve Coleman describes
Okazakis development during this period: Miles has always been a very intense cat. Ive always been
impressed with his perseverance and how deep he gets into his research. When he rst came to me years ago,
all he wanted to talk about was conceptual stuff, but now that hes internalized it, it just comes out organically.
You can really hear that in his playing now. For his new music, Okazaki decided to use Anthony Tidd on bass
and Sean Rickman on drums, the long-running rhythmic engine and his bandmates in Steve Coleman and Five
Elements, with whom he has performed with hundreds of times. Its a fascinating opportunity to hear their
unique chemistry the quicksilver ability to process and internalize complex information, transform musical
material through improvisation, and do it all while staying in the pocket in a wholly different context. Both
Tidd and Rickman have deep roots in funk, R&B, and hip hop, and it is fascinating to hear Okazakis music
through the lter of these musical sensibilities. Okazakis next call went to pianist Craig Taborn, perhaps the
most widely-admired pianist on the cutting-edge of jazz, who brings a supremely inventive musical sense to
everything he plays. Together they have created a breakthrough statement by Okazaki, a unied book of
compositions that grooves from beginning to end.

Trickster was originally inspired by Lewis Hydes book Trickster Makes This World. As Okazaki describes it,
The trickster gure is an ancient archetype in human folklore. They are creative in nature, using mischief and
magic to disrupt the state of things, breaking taboos and conventions, opening doorways. They exist outside of
the mainstream, working from the margins, creating movement across the borders. They cause damage and
they heal. They are storytellers and improvisers. He specically chose the stories of Eshu, Raven, Krishna,
Heyoka, Thoth, and Hermes, with their themes of mischief, disguise, paradox, chaos, illusion, and balance as
the basis of musical structures and improvisations. One can get a sense of the trickster narratives by following
the rhythms, which have many twists and turns and are not always what they seem to be. For example, Box in
a Box, which tell a story of Raven, a trickster from the native peoples of the Salish Sea in the Pacic
Northwest, in which he disguises himself as a child to steal the light of the world that is hidden in the center of
an innite number of nested boxes. The composition works at this feeling of continual unboxing through a
number of musical devices: rotating all-interval tetrachords, their intersection with symmetrical melodies, a
perpetually shape-shifting bassline, an illusory drum gure. This machinery all ts into a conventional, square-
shaped musical form. In Eating Earth, which comes from the Indian tale of Krishna, whose mother asked to
look in his mouth when he was accused of eating dirt, only to see the entire universe inside. She even sees
herself looking into her sons mouth the whole contained within the part. In this composition, each instrument
oats through time at different speeds, colliding and combining into sonic constellations, never forming the

http://www.milesokazaki.com/albums/trickster-2017/ 3/6
7/12/2017 Trickster (2017) | MILES OKAZAKI

same shape twice. This method of disguising intricate compositional machinery in a relaxed, earthy rhythmic
ow has become Okazakis newfound style.

Another inspiration for the music comes from the Japanese art of origami, in which all models are made by
folding a single uncut square of paper. According to Okazaki, Ive always believed in the idea that working
within constraints focuses creativity, sharpens technique, and ultimately leads to greater freedom than having
no boundaries at all. The central challenge of origami is to create new forms from one basic shape. All of the
compositions on this album are contained within simple shapes 12 or 16 bars of 4/4 or 3/4. But this fact is
largely disguised by various rhythmic illusions and internal folds within the form. His folded models of fox
and raven, two trickster animals, appear on the album cover. The back cover shows the papers after the
models are unfolded, revealing their internal geometry in a pattern of creases that has a beauty of their own.
The music on Trickster is designed to encourage risk-taking. There are many traps and deceptions, but
navigating through these spaces open possibility of discovering new territory. Craig Taborn addresses this
idea: You have to give it up to a trickster. You have to engage with this chaotic element where you really
dont know how it may go. And not only that, trickster deities are very neutral, they dont really care. That
energy doesnt want you to win or not win. It can go either way, but you have to propitiate it and engage with
it, hoping for some kind of benecial or positive outcome. But you have to be willing to ow with the other thing
too, and thats what it takes to really improvise.

Liner Notes:

We constantly distinguish right and wrong, sacred and profane, clean and dirty, male and female, young
and old, living and dead and in every case trickster will cross the line and confuse the distinction.
Lewis Hyde, Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth and Art

The trickster gure is an ancient archetype in human folklore. Tricksters are creative in nature, using mischief
and magic to disrupt the state of things, breaking taboos and conventions, opening doorways. They exist
outside of the mainstream, working from the margins, creating movement across the borders. They cause
damage and they heal. They are storytellers and improvisers. Because these ideas resonate with my approach
to music-making, it occurred to me that the trickster could be a fertile theme for a new book of compositions. As
I began my research, I looked for themes that seemed musical in nature, translating them into compositions for
quartet. My main concern was that the musicians focus on testing the limits of each composition through
improvisation, with the sensibility of storytelling in mind. The listener can get a sense of the trickster narratives
by following the rhythms, which have many twists and turns and are not always what they seem to be.

About the music:

Kudzu is a type of rapidly growing vine that covers structures and trees, creating the giant alien leaf sculptures
often seen on the side of the highway. This song is an introduction, inviting the audience to follow a winding,
slippery path into the wilderness.

Mischief is inspired by the African deity Eshu (Elegu in Cuba and Exu in Brazil, honored at the opening of
ceremonies, rituals, performances). In one story, he wears a hat that is half red and half black, causing two
neighbors to argue about its true color. The confusion over this teaches some lessons about context and ways of
knowing. Different people will hear the playful rhythm of this song differently: none are wrong, but none are
completely right, either.

http://www.milesokazaki.com/albums/trickster-2017/ 4/6
7/12/2017 Trickster (2017) | MILES OKAZAKI

Box in a Box considers the labors of Raven, a trickster from the native peoples of the Salish Sea in the Pacic
Northwest. Raven disguises himself as a child to steal the light of the world, which is hidden in the center of an
innite number of nested boxes. The composition works at this feeling of continual unboxing through a number
of musical devices: rotating all-interval tetrachords, their intersection with symmetrical melodies, a perpetually
shape-shifting bassline, an illusory drum gure. This machinery all ts into a conventional, square-shaped
musical form.

Eating Earth comes from the Indian tale of Krishna, whose mother asked to look in his mouth when he was
accused of eating dirt, only to see the entire universe inside. She even sees herself looking into her sons mouth
the whole contained within the part. In this composition, each instrument oats through time at different
speeds, colliding and combining into sonic constellations, never forming the same shape twice. The melodic
material comes from four interlocking complementary hexachords. The piano improvisation guides us through.

Black Bolt is a brief interlude, a fractured song where twelve tones are separated into four triads, and the
regular drum groove is broken into a series of jagged phrases.

The West is a passing storm, featuring the drums. The Oglala Sioux holy man Black Elk received a vision from
the thunder beings of the West, which allowed him act as heyoka, a sacred clown. Depictions of heyokas often
show them holding sticks to beat out thunder on the drums. Black Elk describes the heyoka ceremony, where
everything is backwards, and it is planned that the people shall be made to feel jolly and happy rst, so that it
may be easier for the power to come to them. You have noticed that the truth comes into this world with two
faces. One is sad with suffering, and the other laughs; but it is the same face, laughing or weeping [from John
G. Neihardt, Black Elk Speaks]

The Calendar is a song about celestial movements, and comes from the story of the Egyptian god Thoth, a
trickster who beat the Moon in a game of dice. The Moon owned 360 days, and Thoth won 1/72 of them. He
then added these ve days to the original 360 to make a 365 day calendar. The Moon lost some of its light,
and was forced to wax and wane. This composition draws on these numbers for its form, along with the ancient
Babylonian calendar, which is built on the conjunction of 235 lunar months and 19 solar years. In this song,
mutating harmonies wax and wane through all 19 congurations of three notes, moving by only one pitch at a
time.

Caduceus is the staff carried by the Greek trickster Hermes. As an infant, he created a lyre out of a tortoise and
hypnotized Apollo with his improvisations, convincing him to trade his caduceus for the instrument. To test the
magical power of the staff, Hermes threw it between two ghting serpents who then wound themselves around
it in harmony and balance. This song is made from multiple melodies in counterpoint winding around a central
axis, where the improvisational challenge involves navigating across the borders of intersecting spaces.

Borderland is the threshold, the doorway out, the liminal space that we pass through before moving on. The
composition is a short rhythmic canon for solo guitar.

About the Artwork:

In origami, all models are made by folding a single uncut square of paper. The central challenge is to create
new forms from this basic shape. When the paper is unfolded, the architecture for the model is revealed in a
pattern of creases that has a beauty of its own. All of the compositions on this album are contained within
simple shapes 12 or 16 bars of 4/4 or 3/4. But this fact is largely disguised by various rhythmic illusions and
internal folds within the form. Ive always believed in the idea that working within constraints focuses
creativity, sharpens technique, and ultimately leads to greater freedom than having no boundaries at all. I
http://www.milesokazaki.com/albums/trickster-2017/ 5/6
7/12/2017 Trickster (2017) | MILES OKAZAKI

wanted to make an image with this concept in mind, so I found instructions for two trickster animals, fox and
raven, and slowly learned how to make the required folds. They appear in conversation on the cover, and the
back cover shows the unfolded gures with their internal geometry exposed.

Miles Okazaki

Produced by Miles Okazaki

Executive Producers: Seth Rosner, Yulun Wang, and M-Base Concepts, Inc.

Recorded January 14-15, 2016 by Joe Marciano and Max Ross;

and mastered by Michael Marciano at Systems Two Recording Studios, Brooklyn, NY

Mixed by Anthony Tidd at TidbiT Sonos, Philadelphia, PA

Folding and cover photo by Miles Okazaki Fox design by John Montroll Raven design by Quentin Trollip
Package design by Miles Okazaki Band photo by Dimitri Louis

All compositions by Miles Okazaki

2017 Salish Sea Music, SESAC

http://www.milesokazaki.com/albums/trickster-2017/ 6/6

You might also like