Miles Okazaki is not the jazz guitarist who captures the wide open spaces of the United States with his sweeping vision, amazing technique, and knack for melody, right? That’s another guy… what’s his name again? Except that Miles Okazaki most certainly is that jazz guitarist, but with a slant.
I will always be a Pat Metheny fan, to be clear, but there is a ton of room out west for the sound of American improvised music to rush your heart and thrill you. Okazaki’s new Boomtown isn’t Metheny-ish as much as it is a generous vision that suggests big landscapes and a wide-open sense of what this country’s music sounds like. Using a large band (three saxophones, two trombones, two bass players, piano, drums, and his guitars), he has created music that is rich but rising—like a sunrise, with different colors refracting up over the horizon. It is not any kind of “easy listening” yet, even with its moments of dissonance; Boomtown projects transparency and optimism, stirring your ears like a grand vista stirs your heart.
This new album somewhat inherits the size and spirit of Okazaki’s 2024 recording Miniature America, which also had a ten-piece band, albeit with three voices, vibes, and performances that were nearly all shorter than pop singles. Before that, Okazaki’s two recent vehicles were smaller: his small group “Trickster”, which specialized in playing ingenious, wheel-within-a-wheel compositions with a fleet sense of technique and brilliance, and his solo-guitar project to record every known composition by Thelonious Monk. All of Okazaki’s artistry from those projects is present in his new direction. Still, the larger palette, particularly on Boomtown, suggests that the guitarist is moving toward a more expansive kind of his music.
The Trickster albums are favorites of mine, but I understand that they are almost literally inward-facing. Okazaki’s writing for the small band recalls his work with saxophonist Steve Coleman, lines spinning and overlapping like the gears in a Swiss watch. Boomtown has twice as many players, but Okazaki finds ways to air the music out.
For example, “Spotted Horse” presents a gently orchestrated melody for the five wind instruments and acoustic guitar, which then, as the song becomes “Bigborn”, opens outward to a spare rhythm section arrangement. Dan Weiss plays with loose openness while Matt Mitchell‘s piano and Okazaki’s guitar shine light into the sound. Jon Irabagon‘s soprano saxophone takes a sonically daring solo, followed by a more full-throated harmonization of the theme. Okazaki seems to have the composer/arranger Gil Evans on his mind here. And the climactic trombone solo by Jacob Garchik, lifted by backing figures of the theme, sounds absolutely like that spotted horse moving across the plain.
Mitchell’s sumptuous solo piano introduction to “Ten Sleep” is a microcosm of Boomtown‘s strength: lyrical but never cloying. It invites the band’s bass players, Chris Tordini and Hannah Marks, into conversation, which is then washed in a delicate arrangement for Caroline Davis’s alto saxophone, Irabagon’s tenor, the trombones (Garchik and Kalia Vandever), and flute from Anna Webber. The full track matches Mitchell’s setup, full and rich but beautiful in its details, fulfilling the promise that contemporary jazz, even the stuff coming from the knotty techniques of Brooklyn, remains essentially gorgeous.
The opening of Boomtown certainly couldn’t be more inviting. “Magic Hour”, named for that time just after sunrise when the day’s light is particularly glowing, is a feature for Okazaki’s acoustic guitar, which plays a simple melody that weaves through a set of inquiring chords. The piano and the horns, low in their registers, accompany the leader like shadows might begin the day, sliding gently across the landscape. The melodic idea is then extended into the follow-up, “Boomtown Girl”, with electric guitar taking up the lick, the horns joining and then blossoming into a collective improvisation that puts the sun fully over the horizon.
While the full band offers Boomtown power and size, Okazaki intersperses several small-group tracks throughout. “Diamondville” is a pastel duet for Vandever’s trombone and Okazaki’s colorful guitar. “Hole in the Wall” puts a deep 7/4 drum/bass groove in the service of a sonic commingling of Webber’s tenor saxophone sound and electric guitar experimentation. “Recluse Road”, in contrast, is a back-and-forth between Irabagon’s tenor and the guitar, each at their most purely melodic. Piano and bass move through a set of stately harmonies beneath them, making the track sound almost classical in its precision.
For Okazaki fans who wouldn’t want him to wander too far from his Trickster persona, there is “Thermopolis”, which uses both bass players and Mitchell’s left hand to set up an interlocking puzzle that grooves its tuchus off. The horns eventually join with a snaking blues melody, and you find yourself tapping your toe even if you aren’t sure where “the one” really is. If the music is this engaging, who cares?
The titles of most tracks on Boomtown make it clear that Miles Okazaki wanted to evoke the American West and maybe the past, painting a verbal picture that conjures a classic film, perhaps. I thought of those Metheny landscapes, sure, but probably the better comparison is to how guitarist Bill Frisell has constructed a sound that feints at styles well beyond “jazz” while retaining the edges and angles that define his guitar style.
When you listen to Okazaki’s “Devil’s Tower”, the penultimate track on the new Boomtown, you hear all of his downtown, modern jazz styling mixed with a wider and distinctive lens. The big sound of the country opens up as his guitar and Caroline Davis’s alto play toggling intervals that are echoed by the larger band behind the saxophone solo. Okazaki climbs aboard to take his most adventurous solo, laying in some distortion and scrambling through Weiss’s cymbals and a chattering, dramatic climax.
Like Frisell, Miles Okazaki has roots west of the Mississippi but is also the kind of modernist whose sound suggests a huge range of locales, audiences, and influences. With Boomtown, he has created perhaps his most ambitious recording. Its wide lens accommodates the distinctive voices of a band of daring improvisers, and its powerful melodies and arrangements are grounded equally in jazz tradition and a spirit of adventure.
Miles Okazaki has had no trouble defining his own space and personality on the big American landscape. He sounds, finally, like no other guitarist.