FRIDAY
Rising jazz musician to make isle debut
Up-and-coming jazz artist Alicyn Yaffee brings her lyrical guitar licks and soulful voice to Medici’s for her Hawaii debut today. Drummer Von Baron and pianist Danny del Negro join in.
Yaffee grew up in California and began performing at several regional jazz festivals while still in high school, winning several awards. At Sacramento State University, her ability to sing in perfect pitch with her guitar — she does a great George Benson-style “Masquerade” — gained her accolades. She also sang first soprano for the school’s jazz vocal ensemble, which won a best student group award from Downbeat magazine.
She’s since relocated to New York, working with some eclectic bands. She’s received the endorsement of none other than Hawaii’s own Benny Rietveld, bassist for Carlos Santana. He will perform with her and is producing her first album, due out later this month.
“What I like about Alicyn is that she doesn’t seem to be trying to follow any of the current ‘jazz chick’ trends,” Rieveld said in an email. “Also, she plays from the soul, rather than from technique, and that includes her songwriting. Her influences are wide: George Benson and Grant Green are heroes of hers, but so equally are Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell and Björk.”
Where: Medici’s, Manoa Marketplace
When: 7:30 p.m. today
Cost: $20
Info: medicismanoa.com or 351-0901
Mix-and-match mashup of musicians
Everyone knows each other in Hawaii. Good Foot, a local band headed by Babatunji Heath, will take advantage of that with mix-and-match mashup performances featuring members of Good Foot, which plays soul, funk and Afrobeat, and several other bands.
“These are bands that the people in Good Foot are involved in, so we’re sort of bringing in concepts of what they’re into,” Heath said. “It’s an expression of versatility and it just speaks to the influences of what Good Foot is doing.”
Expect an eclectic repertoire that features the extended family of musicians that he and his band members know. Good Foot’s horn players, sax player Ray Beatty and trombonist David Goldfarb, will join pianist Gary Pak for a set. They’ll be followed by Jamarek, led by Kahnma K, pictured. Good Foot percussionist Lori Kimatac also plays in Jamarek, which specializes in West African music. A third group, rock ’n’ roll band Seven Pairs of Iron Shoes, uses Good Foot bass player Jason Forester and will also join in on the show. Good Foot vocalist Maria Remos will DJ between sets.
Where: Downbeat Diner & Lounge, 42 N. Hotel St.
When: 8:30 p.m. today
Cost: No cover
Info: 533-2328. 21+
SATURDAY – SUNDAY
Classical pianist returns for Spanish-inspired symphony performances
The audience jumped to its feet when pianist Joyce Yang finished the Tchaikovsky piano concerto three seasons ago. She returns to Hawaii this week to perform Spanish music with the Hawai‘i Symphony Orchestra.
It’s a relatively new addition to her repertoire, brought about in part by her recent collaborations with violinist Augustin Hadelich, who wowed Honolulu audiences last season and recently won a Grammy.
“We really try not to just wing it, but really dig into the repertoire,” she said.
She’ll perform De Falla’s “Nights in the Gardens of Spain,” a colorful work for piano and orchestra. “It’s a hard piece soloistically because I really don’t have a lot to work with,” she said with a laugh. “I’m part of the orchestra, and everyone expects me to do something virtuosic. It’s like, ‘She’s waiting to pounce’ but I never pounce. A lot of it has to do with texture. I help the group shimmer, like I’m the wind behind the drama. So it’s like I have to find the brightest and truest colors in everything.”
Her chance to “pounce” will come with Ginastera’s “Danzas Argentinas,” a set of solo pieces that include one piece written in one key for the left hand and another for the right. “The Ginastera is so showy, so in your face, and the rhythms are so explicit,” she said.
Yang is noted for meticulously sketching the pieces she performs, coming up with diagrams that look more like football plays than music. For Spanish music, however, she winds up going off her charts. “Spanish music is the one kind of music that I find I end up getting the furthest from my original plan,” she said. “No matter how much you want to control it, it kind of has its own life.”
Spanish-inspired favorites “Don Juan, Op. 20,” by Strauss, and Bizet’s “Suite No.2 from ‘Carmen’” round out the concert. Grammy winner Joel Revzen, whose acclaimed conducting career includes stints with the Metropolitan Opera, the Arizona Opera and several European opera companies, leads the orchestra.
Where: Blaisdell Concert Hall
When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday, 4 p.m. Sunday
Cost: $32-$94
Info: ticketmaster.com or 866-448-7849
Note: Yang and the symphony also perform 7:30 p.m. today at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center. mauiarts.org
MONDAY, MARCH 21
Sweet isle melodies reinvented for brass
Honolulu Brass Quintet celebrates its 40th anniversary this week with a premiere performance of a medley of Hawaii favorites arranged by Seattle-based composer Anthony DiLorenzo.
DiLorenzo, a trumpeter, has composed for film trailers and television — “almost everything you hear from ABC Sports,” he said, as well as serious orchestral compositions. For this concert, he combined the tunes “I’ll Remember You,” “Kawaipunahele,” “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and “White Sandy Beach,” tunes that Israel Kamakawiwo‘ole made famous.
His challenge was to use brass instruments to play tunes that were typically sung with accompaniment by strummed instruments. With strummed instruments, musicians can just keep playing. Not so for brass players, who are limited by the length of their breaths.
“To make a chord, you need three people, so that means three people most of the time are playing throughout the whole piece, with very little rest,” he said. “You have to really get creative in how to pass that along from player to player while the fourth or fifth player — if it’s a duet — does the melody.”
He thinks the tunes are “beautiful” and remind him of his trips here. “‘White Sandy Beach’ is so simplistic, it’s so beautiful,” he said. “It’s very blissful, very heartwarming, In fact, that blissful status is what I used to title the arrangement, calling it ‘Hawaiian Bliss.’”
Works by David Sampson, John Glasel, Joan Tower and Oskar Böhme’s are also on the program.
Where: Paliku Theatre, Windward Community College
When: 7:30 p.m. Monday
Cost: $30 (students free)
Info: chambermusichawaii.org or 489-5038
Note: The concert will be repeated at 7:30 p.m March 21 at the Honolulu Museum of Art.
Jonathan Butler and Jon Gibson join Michael and Rene Paulo. 8 p.m. today. New Hope Auditorium, 290 Sand Island Access Road. $40-85. TIX.com or 951-696-0184.
