B on Hawaii

On Saturday, March 6, the 10th Annual Great Waikoloa `Ukulele Festival will take place from 2:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Held at Queens' Marketplace on the Big Island of Hawai`i, the event will feature legendary "Ambassador of Aloha" Danny Kaleikini as Master of Ceremonies.

A last-minute "Island to Island for Haiti" benefit concert and food event has been organized for his Friday, February 12, to raise money for the victims of the earthquake there. Cecilio & Kapono will headline the concert, to be held on the lagoon-fronting Great Lawn at O`ahu's Hilton Hawaiian Village.

Fortunate to have a very loyal (and vocal!) readership base in Southern California, we at B on Hawaii are happy to share some aloha headed east from the islands. On January 24, at 2:00 p.m., the 3rd Annual SoCal Slack Key Festival will take place at the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center.

What began as a distracting itch nearly 40 years ago has blossomed in to the lifelong pursuit for musician Michael Utley. In fact, this keyboardist and self-proclaimed “product of the Nashville and Memphis rhythm and blues scenes” had his sights set on a life studying the creature habits of, well, creatures.

Hawaii’s most Grammy Award winning producer, songwriter, composer and musician, Daniel Ho, has checked in from Los Angeles to let us know that he’s submitted a handful of albums for consideration of this year’s Grammy for Hawaiian music. As most of you know, Ho and Tia Carrere took last year’s Grammy with their duet album, ikena.

Autumn is upon us. If not climatically, at least the calendar says so. Either way, it’s time for the Honolulu Symphony to begin it’s season—and try as they might to get each and every one of us culturally enriched through the usage of multiple woodwinds, strings and tympani.

On a late Spring day at the Kahala Mall, multiple Grammy Award-winning music producer Daniel Ho took the stage with ukulele in hand. He performed a few tunes to passers-by, grabbed his things, and walked down to the movie theaters still inside the mall.

On a rainy June night in the hills of Nu'uanu, a guitar player sits on a rickety old stool in his garage, re-tuning his instrument and jotting notes on a pad. Behind him someone is weaving coconut, while another is pulling the tether on a make-shift sail.

This June the soundtrack of Hawaii will be all-Rachmaninoff. It's time for the Aloha International Piano Festival, and hometown hero (and assistant professor of piano at the Juilliard School of Music) Sean Botkin returns to present a recital, as well as teach master classes on the week's featured composer.

If you haven't seen an outdoor concert at the Waikiki Aquarium, then this is the summer that you should break the trend. The Thursday evening "Ke Kani O Ke Kai" summer concert series has been an annual event that brings in the top Hawaiian artists, puts them onstage facing the lapping shoreline of Waikiki, and offers unparalleled sunset views as the music takes hold.