The music of Queen Lili‘uokalani has been performed by thousands of Hawaii musicians, from school and church choirs to its best pop musicians. Now, it’s getting another look by some virtuoso classical string musicians, who were inspired by the story of the queen’s imprisonment in Iolani Palace during the overthrow of the monarchy.
Led by cellist Josh Nakazawa of the Hawai‘i Symphony Orchestra, the group Mana Music Quartet is releasing an album of the queen’s songs next month, transcribed for classical string quartet — two violins, viola and cello. Ukulele virtuoso Jake Shimabukuro, master bassist Benny Rietveld and steel guitar specialist Greg Sardinha are featured guest artists.
When COVID-19 pandemic fears began to spread back in March, Nakazawa invited violinists Eric Silberger and Mann-Wen Lo to stay with him. Silberger is an internationally acclaimed violinist who founded a music festival on Hawaii island, while Lo is a Taiwanese-born violinist who is carving out an international career exploring classical standards, jazz and bluegrass. They had just finished playing with Silberger’s festival when countries began implementing quarantines and other travel restrictions.
“It seemed so dangerous that I offered to have them stay with me until it blew over,” Nakazawa said.
His guests wound up staying until late July. One day, they were reading music together in Nakazawa’s apartment with violist and violinist Duane Padilla, who also plays with the local symphony. Padilla pulled out his transcription of “Ku’u Pua I Paoakalani,” a song referring to the queen’s estate in Waikiki. The song is particularly poignant because one of her followers brought flowers to her from the estate’s garden when she was imprisoned, wrapping them in newspapers so that she could keep up with events of the day.
“We got chills running down our spine because she wrote many of those arrangements while she was confined to her palace,” Nakazawa said. “She was kind of quarantined when she was doing that, and we were feeling like we were too. … We were playing these arrangements as if we were feeling this closer connection to what the queen might have been feeling.”
The resulting album features 15 of the queen’s 165 known compositions, including favorites like “Aloha ‘Oe,” “Ke Aloha O Ka Haku” (also known as “The Queen’s Prayer”), “Ka Hanu O Hanakeoki” (“The Fragrance of Hanakeoki”), “Sanoe,” which refers to the mist drifting over the mountains, and “He Mele Lahui Hawai‘i,” which was originally composed as a national anthem for the Hawaiian kingdom.
Padilla, who wrote all of the arrangements, got interested in the queen’s music while playing with Sovereign Strings, a band that performs music of the Hawaiian monarchy through the first decades of American rule. It was a time when music in Hawaii was in great ferment, and string instruments like violin played a prominent role in the bands of the day.
“There was a tradition of violin-playing in Hawaii that was kind of lost or forgotten,” he said. “Apparently, the licks that they play on lap steel guitar are the licks that would be played on violin in a Hawaiian string band at the turn of the century.”
The quartet adopted a period performance style and sensibility, using what Nakazawa described as “old-school” vibrato and phrasing, with Padilla incorporating elements of chant, four-part choral writing and slack-key guitar into the transcriptions.
“There are more modern arrangements with jazzy harmonies and the like, but we tried to avoid that and keep it true to the original source,” Padilla said. “We decided to keep it faithful to how she was hearing it, just re-imagining it for string quartet.”
The instruments the group used also resonate with history. Silberger plays a rare Guadagnini violin from 1757, while Lo plays a 1925 instrument from Giuseppe Fiorini, who is considered an important Italian maker. Nakazawa’s cello was built by Viennese maker Johann Baptist Schweitzer in 1831.
Padilla identified with many of the queen’s songs, such as “The Queen’s Prayer.” “She had just been overthrown, but that was her offering of forgiveness for those who had overthrown her. In this time when everything is so politically crazy, it seemed like a nice thing to say.”
Shimabukuro, along with Rietveld, is featured on “Ahe Lau Makani” (“The Soft Gentle Breeze”), a flowing tune referring to the breath of a lover. “That’s one of my all-time favorite traditional pieces, not just of the queen, but overall,” Shimabukuro said. “I remember the first time (hearing it), it was Dennis Kamakahi singing it, with just solo guitar.”
Shimabukuro devoted his full creative effort into the tune, trying different plucking techniques, from full strumming to single-note melodies, eventually settling on the tremolo approach, which involved fast, delicate picking on the same note. “I found that that I could be so much more in sync with the strings,” he said. “Dynamically, and I could weave in and out with them. That, for me, changed my whole outlook on the piece.”
Shimabukuro and Nakazawa have collaborated on several small projects in recent years, having met initially in 2015 when Nakazawa played in the symphony behind Shimabukuro for Byron Yasui’s challenging ”Concerto for Ukulele and Orchestra, Campanella.”
“One of the things I appreciate about Josh is that he’s so community minded,” Shimabukuro said. “He’s always thinking about how to benefit the community, the environment.”
Rietveld, who also performs in “Alohe ‘Oe,” originally expressed interest in the project by contributing to its GoFundMe campaign, and was pleased to participate.
“This bunch are a really exciting find for me,” Rietveld said in an email. “To find a real string quartet that is not only comprised of world-class individual players, but can blend so well together as an ensemble, is a great ‘secret weapon.’ I was enchanted by the idea of the scope of the project, and also so impressed by their ensemble sound, that I couldn’t wait to dive into these songs. … It required two different styles, types of basses, and even two different camera setups. It was a real honor for me.”
Nakazawa, a native of Boston, has found the musical traditions in Hawaii something to treasure.
“Getting to know it has been really special and really interesting,” he said. “I feel like as an artist, artists have a responsibility to interpret and translate the history, the culture, so that people can relate to it and have feelings for it and raise questions about the future.”
“Queen Lili‘uokalani”
Mana Music Quartet
The 15-track album includes an eight-page pamphlet; cover art by Oahu artist Solomon Enos. Pre-orders available for $17.99 at
manamusichawaii.com. Delivery is expected in September.
