Meg Okura is an award-winning composer and violinist based in New York. She is the 2023 winner of the ISJAC (International Society of Jazz Arranger and Composers) Fundamental Freedom Commission Awards, International Alliance for Women in Music 2023 Search for New Music Competition Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble Prize, 2022 BRIO (Bronx Recognizes Its Own) Awards, 2021 NYC Women’s Fund for Media, Music & Theater, 2021 Jazz Road Creative Residencies, 2020 Copland House Residency Awards, 2018 Chamber Music America New Jazz Works grant, and many other grants and awards.

She has toured internationally as a violinist, appearing at Carnegie Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Barbican Hall in the U.K., Madison Square Garden, Village Vanguard, Blue Note Tokyo, Hollywood Bowl, and numerous concert halls, jazz and Jewish music festivals worldwide with many jazz greats such as Lee Konitz, Michael Brecker, Tom Harrel, Steve Swallow, Sam Newsome, Diane Reeves, Vince Giodano, as well as David Bowie, Pharaoh’s Daughter, Cirque du Soleil, Emilio Solla, and many others. In 2018, she placed No. 6 Jazz Violinist in the International Critics Polls.

Dubbed “the queen of chamber jazz” by All About Jazz, Ms. Okura leads her Pan Asian Chamber Jazz Ensemble, appearing in its hometown of New York at Birdland Jazz Club, Blue Note, Knitting Factory, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola at Jazz At Lincoln Center, Winter JazzFest, as well as Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., K.L. Jazz Festival in Malaysia, and sold-out concerts in Japan.

A native of Tokyo, Ms. Okura toured Asia as the soloist and concertmaster of the Asian Youth Orchestra. At 19, she made her U.S. solo debut at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. She moved to New York, and earned BM and MM degrees from the Juilliard School.

Ms. Okura had recently returned from a tour of Hawaii with her duo project with jazz pianist Kevin Hays as a recipient of Jazz Road Tours, a national initiative of South Arts, which is funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation with additional support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The duo’s album “Lingering” on Adhyaropa Records is due May 10, 2024.

Ms. Okura has released nine albums as a leader. Her violinist, erhu player, or composer credits appear in over 100 albums, films, and live-performance videos. Meg Okura and the Pan Asian Chamber Jazz Ensemble have released four critically acclaimed albums: a self-titled debut album (2006) Naima (2010), Music of Ryuichi Sakamoto (2013), and Ima Ima (2018), chosen the “Best Releases of 2018” by Dan Bilawsky on All About Jazz as well as the New York Times Editor’s Pick, describing her music as “grandiloquent beauty that transitions easily from grooves to big cascades to buoyant swing.” Her release of 2018 NPO Trio Live at The Stone was Bandcamp’s Best fo March 2018. The most recent and the fifth recording of the Pan Asian Chamber Jazz Ensemble will be released later this year.

Ms. Okura’s latest commissioned work, “Silent Screams: An Anthem For The Unheard,” will be performed at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN, as a part of the 2024 ISJAC Symposium. She will be spending part of the summer at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts as the recipient of the 50th Anniversary VCCA Fellowships for Artists of Color, 2024.

Okura’s latest commissioned work, as the winner fo the 2024 Wa-hi Jazz Composition Competition, will be performed by her Pan Asian Chamber Jazz Ensemble in New York City on November 2, 2024.