UH Guitar Concert Series: Benny Chong, Byron Yasui, and Noel Okimoto

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Benny Chong is a founding member of The Aliis, a group that, together with Don Ho, rose to international fame in the 1960s. He is a highly respected regular on Hawaii’s professional music circuit. With a love for local music, jazz, and pop, he has played ‘ukulele since childhood, finding his main inspiration in the jazz stylings of the legendary California bassist turned ‘ukulele player Lyle Ritz. Passion and hours of dedicated practice since then have given Benny an exciting and influential style of his own, full of interesting chord inversions and fluid improvisations. Benny has taken jazz ‘uke playing to a new level which will be very difficult to surpass because of the musical challenges of his repertoire and the complexity of his left and right hand techniques that no one before him or currently has ever mastered or even thought about. His harmonic, melodic and rhythmic sense is on par with the best jazz musicians in the world. Noted musicians who hear him for the first time walk away in awe. Nobody would expect that jazz could be played on the ‘ukulele in the manner that Benny plays.

Joining Benny Chong are Byron Yasui, bass, and Noel Okimoto, percussion.

Ticket Information
$12 general admission, $8 students, seniors (65+), UH faculty/staff (ID required) (at the door)

Event Sponsor
Music Department, Mānoa Campus

More Information
(808) 956-8742, uhmmusic@hawaii.edu, http://manoa.hawaii.edu/music

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