Miles Okazaki to Reissue WORK Solo Guitar Album

Guitarist Miles Okazaki is reissuing his widely acclaimed 2018 six-disc solo guitar album WORK, featuring the entire Monk songbook. The reissue coincides with the October 10, 2026 release of The Monkathon, an unprecedented live concert film by filmmaker Frank Heath and producer David Breskin documenting the complete works of Thelonious Monk performed on solo guitar.

Recorded in 2017 during Monk's centennial year and released in 2018, the album was heralded as a 'monumental statement of devotion' (Giovanni Russonello, New York Times), 'the six-string equivalent of a free solo climb up El Capitan' (Nate Chinen, WBGO), 'heroic' (Kevin Whitehead, NPR's Fresh Air), and 'jaw-dropping' (Mark Corroto, All About Jazz). The album landed on more than a dozen Top Ten lists and Okazaki was voted the #1 rising star guitarist in the DownBeat Critic's Poll.

In 2024, Okazaki undertook an extraordinary feat. Over five hours in one evening at The Jazz Gallery, Okazaki played the 66 compositions of the complete works of Thelonious Monk, from memory, on solo guitar. Two days later, he did it again. Filmmaker Frank Heath was there to capture this unique performance.

The Monkathon, Heath's four-part film documenting Okazaki's marathon concert, will be available on October 10, Monk's 109th birthday. The concert film, as well as the Behind the Monkathon 'making of' featurette and Okazaki's training notebook, gallery, and narrative, will be released via a dedicated website, Monkathon.com, and will be freely available to the public, in perpetuity.

The Monkathon builds on Okazaki's 2017 project recording the complete Thelonious Monk songbook during Monk's centennial year. Upon its release in 2018, Okazaki's 6-disc album Work received wide acclaim for its audacious originality. The album landed on more than a dozen Top Ten lists and Okazaki was voted the #1 rising star guitarist in the DownBeat Critic's Poll. On October 10, 2026, Okazaki will also reissue Work on CD on the Cygnus Recordings label. The album has been unavailable since the sellout of the original printing.

The Monkathon began to take shape in 2022 in San Francisco, two days before Monk's 105th birthday, when Okazaki played a solo set of Monk's works at SFJAZZ. After the set he was approached by producer, writer and fellow Monk enthusiast David Breskin who suggested the idea of a comprehensive concert of Monk's music. What if, Breskin suggested, you played Monk's entire songbook in a single night and we filmed it? Okazaki initially resisted the idea, feeling that it was probably out of his reach, but asked for a year to work on the idea. He practiced on a chunky 1940 guitar, working out four potential one-hour setlists. After deciding that the film made sense, the team of Okazaki, Breskin, and Heath assembled to plot tactics.

After the sold-out shows at The Jazz Gallery, it was time to edit reams of concert footage into an engaging narrative. Heath worked for months on cutting the tape into a rhythm that matched the music, creating an inviting, organic flow. 'Through hundreds of small decisions,' says Okazaki, 'Frank had been able to elevate the intimacy and impact of the concert beyond what I could have imagined.'

Thanks to the film, Okazaki became an observer of his own performance. 'I can see that I'm making certain decisions,' he says, 'but on stage I felt like more of a conduit for the music than an active participant. The music and audience had given me at least as much energy as I had used. I had scoured the limits of my abilities to pay tribute to the miraculous body of work of Thelonious Monk. And that was all I wanted to do, really.'

At the outset of the featurette Behind the Monkathon we see an interviewer ask Monk which of his compositions he likes best. 'I like all of them,' he responds. It's the perfect epigraph for Okazaki's approach, which seeks not to single out one piece over another. 'It's about getting your mind around the whole body of work,' he says, 'to see it all in one place. To see how one thing might relate to another.'

As the documentary shows Okazaki going through drawings from early years of his life, it's clear that understanding the world and himself through a notebook and pencil is one way he gets to the heart of things. That kind of obsessive lens serves Monk's music well. 'I'm interested in what kinds of tasks can be done with steady, incremental work,' says Okazaki. 'Inspiration can be unreliable, so I try to make habits instead.'

It's the journey, though, and the bliss of reaching that revelatory flow state that really drives Okazaki. As a parallel to the preparation for the concert, the documentary also chronicles Okazaki's training for the NYC Marathon, which took place only two weeks after the Monk concert. 'Why am I doing this?,' he says, 'it's the lengthy meditation and going through all these little episodes, and what does that do to your consciousness? Running a marathon is different from running five miles five times. It's different. It's not easy to describe how or why, but it's different, you go to different places.'

Through Heath's film of The Monkathon viewers get to go to those places with Okazaki, experiencing the transcendent whole of the great Thelonious Monk oeuvre through the inspired performances of a dedicated, cogent artist.

About Miles Okazaki

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. Okazaki 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.

About Frank Heath

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.