Second Show added! How could they come out to the west coast without making a trip to see our friends in the Santa Cruz/Felton area? Hope to see y'all there! ~ Mahalo, Susie
Keoki Kahumoku & James Hill
Hawaiian Slack Key and Ukulele Blue Grass
June 5, 2011-1:00 pm
Don Quixote's International Music Hall
Highway 9 in Downtown Felton, CA 95018
(619) 595-0300
http://www.donquixotesmusic.info/
Workshops to be announced
If you didn't already know...Here is more about these two!
Keoki Kahumoku is true Aloha. A fifth generation Hawaiian slack key guitar artist and the only artist to appear on six Hawaiian music Grammy award winning albums, Keoki has continued his family legacy by bringing his personal love of Hawaiian music and culture to people around the world. Among his award winning catalog of CDs, three slack key compilation albums include his father, George Kahumoku and legendary artists Rev. Dennis Kamakahi and Cyril Pahinui.
A farmer, pig trapper and one with the land, Keoki lives on the Big Island of Hawaii sharing the music and culture of his ancestors with the children of our next generation. Keoki takes the time to travel the various islands and sit with the kapuna (elders) to share stories and learn songs which he can record and pass on to our younger generations. Keoki founded his non-profit organization, The Center of Hawaiian Music Studies to be able to share his passion and give back to the island communities teaching ukulele and slack key to island children weekly.
The sixth annual Kahumoku Ohana Hawaiian Music and Lifestyle Workshop will take place this November in the district of Ka’u just south of Volcano National Park on Hawaii island. An international gathering of folks of all ages, it is a week-long exchange of friendships, music and cultural education. Workshops also take place whenever Keoki is on tour. Keoki’s life-long dedication is to perpetuate the music of his ancestors beyond the islands. Week long or one day events, Keoki and his award winning friends travel the US teaching Hawaiian slack-key guitar, ‘ukulele, Hawaiian steel guitar and Hawaiian choir. The cirrculum includes songs written by Queen Liliuokalani, Israel Kamakawiwol’ole, and slack key greats such as Sonny Chillingworth and Reverend Dennis Kamakahi.
Keoki also performs year around across the United States, Tahiti and Japan sharing his renditions of Hawaiian classics and his own personal and family stories that have inspired his own contributions to Hawaii’s music.
www.HAtalent.com
www.konaweb.com/keoki
James Hill - So how does a kid from Canada become what the Honolulu Star-Bulletin calls a “rare peer” of Hawaii’s premier ukulele players? Nearly three thousand miles east of Honolulu is James' hometown of Langley, British Columbia, where ukulele instruction has been mandatory in many schools since the late 1970s and where James was introduced to the ukulele at the age of nine. To his fourth grade classmates, the ukulele was a means to an end, a way for them to dip their toes into the vast ocean of music. For James, the uke was a sea of possibilities unto itself and inside its tiny wooden shell he saw his life in music. He was hooked.
During his teenage years he honed his skills as a key member of the renowned Langley Ukulele Ensemble under the direction of Peter Luongo. In a full-circle plot twist, James – also a passionate teacher – recently co-authored the Ukulele in the Classroom method book series with J. Chalmers Doane, the trail-blazing teacher who pioneered the use of ukuleles in Canadian schools.
These days, James' music is heard frequently on CBC and NPR National radio. He has made TV appearances on The Tony Danza Show, MTV, Urban Rush and Studio 4 with Fanny Keifer, and has shared billing with Jerry Douglas, Robert Cray, Lyle Lovett and countless others.
Since turning heads with his early recordings, concert tours throughout North America, Europe and Asia have broadened James' musical tastes and horizons. And while the sense of budding world-weariness that pervades True Love Don't Weep might seem contrary to the ukulele's reputation as a pocket-sized ray of sunshine, the album – a snapshot of two artists coming into their own – radiates a deep caring for music and a certain faith in the ukulele as a four-stringed life-raft for uncertain times.
With his “world-class command of the instrument” (John Berger, Honolulu Star-Bulletin) and "tour de force” mix of jazz, classical and folk influences (Yvonne Zacharias, Vancouver Sun), James is considered a “rare peer” of Hawaii’s premier `ukulelists. "One of the world's top composers for the ukulele and probably the best player on the planet” (Rafe Mair, 600AM Vancouver), James has delighted audiences throughout his native Canada and around the world with a “beautiful, humorous and virtuosic” style all his own (David Kidney, Green Man Review).
"I remember the first time I heard Jimi Hendrix... He did things with an electric guitar that I hadn't imagined, hadn't thought possible. James Hill does that with the ukulele." David Kidney, The Green Man Review.
www.ukulelejames.com
