This is music he has lived with for years, and The Monkathon is his way of spending a very long evening with it.
Miles Okazaki’s The Monkathon is a phenomenal undertaking: a five-hour concert in which the guitarist plays all 66 of Thelonious Monk’s compositions, from memory, on solo guitar. Filmmaker Frank Heath was there to capture the performance at New York’s Jazz Gallery in 2024, and the resulting four-part film puts the viewer remarkably close to the musician and his instrument.
The camera frequently moves in, giving viewers a good look at Okazaki’s hands as he plays. The sound is clear. Song titles appear on screen, and the progress bar provides another way to identify what’s being played. Okazaki doesn’t talk during the performance. He simply moves from one composition to the next, occasionally adding a quiet “ahhh” or a brief laugh as he plays.
There’s something astonishing about watching one person take responsibility for such a large body of music. Monk’s compositions are full of distinctive turns, unexpected intervals and rhythmic surprises, and Okazaki has to keep all of that in his head while maintaining the concentration required to play for hours. He approaches the music with the kind of dedication that makes the word obsessive seem entirely appropriate.
The accompanying featurette, Behind the Monkathon, provides a closer look at what went into the performance. Okazaki talks about his preparation and draws an interesting comparison with another demanding undertaking: training for the New York City Marathon, which took place just two weeks after the concert. Both require sustained effort, careful pacing and the ability to keep going when the initial excitement wears off. He recalls running his first marathon too fast at the beginning, only to burn out and crash. The lesson carried over to the music.
Okazaki is also interested in the relationships among the compositions, in seeing Monk’s work as a complete body of music rather than a collection of individual pieces. As he puts it, running a marathon is different from running five miles on five separate occasions. The same principle applies to playing Monk’s entire songbook in one sitting: the experience changes when the pieces become part of one long journey.
The Monkathon is a remarkable tribute to Monk’s music, but the featurette makes clear that this is more than an ambitious musical exercise for Okazaki. At one point, he looks through his collection of Monk records and talks about them as old friends. There’s a warmth in that moment that helps put the five-hour performance in perspective. This is music he has lived with for years, and The Monkathon is his way of spending a very long evening with it. Beginning October 10, 2026, the film will be available to watch free of charge, in perpetuity, at Monkathon.com.
