THURSDAY
>> Kingston Trio has Hawaii history
When the Kingston Trio play at the Hawaii Theatre today, it will be a kind of homecoming. Original and current members of the trio have many connections to Hawaii.
The original trio played a large part in bringing American folk music to the mainstream of popular consciousness, from 1958 onwards. In that year, the Trio released its first album and its hit recording of “Tom Dooley,” and went on to dominate the charts over the next few years, with 14 albums that made Billboard’s Top 10.
Both Bob Shane and Dave Guard, two founding members of the original Trio, were born and raised in Hawaii. Shane, 85, is the only living member of the original trio; Nick Reynolds died in 2008 at age 75 and Guard died in 1991 at age 56.
Shane, a fourth-generation islander born in Hilo, famously taught himself to play guitar and ukulele as a youth. While attending Punahou school on Oahu, he met classmate Guard and a musical collaboration was born.
Shane endorses the current Trio, stating, “It was Nick Reynolds’ and my fondest hope that these great musicians would carry on the Trio musical legacy.”
Trio member Tim Gorelangton was born in Hawaii, as was his father, Eaton; his grandfather, Cecil Gorelangton, married Julia Hope Kamakia Magoon in Hawaii and started their family.
All three members — Gorelangton, Mike Marvin and Don Marovich — have links to the original group. Gorelangton recorded with Reynolds before joining; Marovich, who plays the guitar, banjo and mandolin, performed with the Trio.
Marvin considers himself the the musical “adopted son” of founding member Reynolds, who was his musical mentor.
The current trio cites Bob Dylan, Crosby, Stills & Nash and The Eagles, Mumford & Sons and The Avett Brothers as influences, still carrying forth the tradition of folk music and Americana.
“I am proud to continue The Kingston Trio tradition and to share the music Nick, Dave, Bob and John performed, getting audiences everywhere up and singing with us,” Marvin said.
They arrive in Honolulu as part of the Trio’s “Keep The Music Playing” tour, with a new, live CD to promote.
— Elizabeth Kieszkowski, Star-Advertiser
THE KINGSTON TRIO
>> Where: Hawaii Theatre
>> When: 7 p.m. today
>> Cost: $49-$150
>> Info: 528-0506, kingstontrio.com, hawaiitheatre.com
FRIDAY-SATURDAY
>> Johnny Mathis celebrates Christmas
Johnny Mathis is in the Blaisdell Concert Hall tomorrow and Saturday doing what he’s done for more than 60 years — sharing the emotion of the songs he loves.
“The thing about music is that its very emotional. Most people who participate in it — especially singers — get emotional when they sing. It is what music is all about,” Mathis said.
The Honolulu shows are stops on his ongoing “Voice of Romance” tour, with a set list that includes songs from Mathis’ latest album, 2017’s “Johnny Mathis Sings The Great New American Song Book,” and selections from his several albums of Christmas songs. Mathis’ first Christmas album, “Merry Christmas,” was released in 1958 and has sold more than five-million copies.
Mathis grew up singing with the encouragement of his father, Clem Mathis, who took him San Francisco area nightclubs to see the entertainers performing there. When jazz pianist Erroll Garner played a date at jazz club in the area, Clem made sure that young Johnny got to talk with him.
“I was about 13 years old,” Mathis recalled. “He always played it more than once each time, and it had no lyrics. There I was, all of 13 years old, telling someone as important as Erroll Garner that I wished it had lyrics so I could sing it.”
Mathis got his wish years later when veteran lyricist Johnny Burke wrote lyrics for the melody. Mathis’s recording of “Misty,” released in 1959, sold more than 2 million copies; 60 years later, his version is still definitive.
Among Mathis’ many other career highlights are more classic oldies — think “Chances Are,” “The Twelfth of Never,” “Gina” and “What Will My Mary Say” — and hit duets with Deniece Williams, Gladys Knight and Regina Bell. A duet he recorded with Freda Payne is scheduled for release in the first half of next year.
— John Berger, Star-Advertiser
‘A JOHNNY MATHIS CHRISTMAS’
>> Where: Blaisdell Concert Hall
>> When: 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday
>> Cost: $49-$199
>> Info: 800-745-3000, ticketmaster.com
FRIDAY AND SUNDAY
>> Opera singers perform holiday favorites
Ta‘u Pupu‘a, the former pro football player turned opera singer, returns to Hawaii to perform a program of holiday and opera favorites this weekend.
His concert, “The Greatest Gift of All,” was organized by Methodist churches in Aiea and Honolulu to raise funds for charitable organizations in Honolulu.
Pupu‘a was born in Tonga and studied music at the University of Utah on a football scholarship. He played briefly in the NFL before a career-ending injury. After meeting the great soprano Kiri Te Kanawa, a New Zealander of Maori descent, at an autograph signing in New York, he got an audition at Juilliard, which offered him a scholarship. He’s been appearing in major opera houses around the world since 2011. His performance in Hawaii Opera Theatre’s 2013 production of “Tosca” received praise from the Matthew Gurewitsch in the New York Times, for a voice that “rang out thrillingly in Cavaradossi’s cries of victory over tyranny then scaled back to plangent tenderness in his reminiscence of a never-to-be-repeated night of love.”
Ta‘u brings three accomplished opera singers to perform with him: soprano Marsha Thompson, winner of the Opera Orchestra of New York Vocal Competition and the Enrico Caruso Awards Competition; soprano Nayoung Ban, who trained at Mannes College of Music in New York and at Chung Ang University in Korea; and baritone SeungHyeon Baek, another graduate of Mannes and Chung Ang who has peformed in New York and Florida. The quartet will perform as soloists in Beethoven’s Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” with the Hawai‘i Symphony Orchestra on Jan. 4 and 5 at Blaisdell Concert Hall.
A combined choir of Aiea Korean and Christ United Methodist churches and a Tongan choir will also perform.
“THE GREATEST GIFT OF ALL”
>> Where: Christ United Methodist Church, 1639 Keeaumoku St.
>> When: 7:30 p.m. Friday and 4 p.m. Sunday
>> Cost: $35
>> Info: 838-3006, brownpapertickets.com
MONDAY
>> Azure and Tennyson play the Blue Note
When vocalist Azure McCall met pianist Tennyson Stephens — it may gave been in 1979, when Stephens was playing at Marrakesh, an upscale Kalakaua Avenue jazz club – it was the birth of one of the great musical marriages in modern Waikiki entertainment. Stephens’ technical dexterity and his imagination as an arranger were half of the musical equation. McCall’s vocal style, stage presence and enjoyment of sophisticated lyrics was the other.
McCall was already a “name” on the Waikiki entertainment scene when they met. A break-out engagement with Augie Rey at the Hale Makai seven years earlier had put her on the map. (The drinking age in the 1970s was 18, and so it is certainly possible that a Punahou basketball team member known as Barry Obama could have seen her singing somewhere before he left Hawaii for college in 1979.)
In the years that followed, McCall and Stephens became one of the top-draw duos in Hawaii. And, in 2008, they played a career milestone acoustic set for the Punahou grad now known as Barack Obama at a private event, a month before he was elected president.
Its been years since McCall and Stephens left Oahu for opportunities elsewhere, and all that history makes the duo’s Monday night one-nighter at the Blue Note a big event in local entertainment — but, there’s more.
McCall also made island entertainment history as a founding member of the Jive Sisters with Shari Lynn and Annie Renick (then Annie MacLachlan), the first modern Hawaii vocal ensemble to revive the classic American pop sound of the Andrews Sisters. Lynn and Renick will be joining McCall onstage for a Jive Sisters reunion at these shows, their first in more than 10 years.
— John Berger, Star-Advertiser
AZURE MCCALL & TENNYSON STEPHENS
With The Jive Sisters
>> Where: Blue Note Hawaii
>> When: 6:30 and 9 p.m. Monday
>> Cost: $25-$45
>> Info: 777-4890, bluenotehawaii.com
