Kaimuki store helps It's almost impossible to imagine the music scene in Honolulu today without the comforting, continuing presence of Harry's Music Store in Kaimuki and, by extension, the musical Yoshioka family. It's equally hard to imagine that their musical legacy came about because, in 1946, Harry Yoshioka told his employers to take this job and ...
family harmonize
its love for music
Harry's Music plays on
after its founder's passingA HAPPY TUNE
Burl Burlingame / bburlingame@starbulletin.com
Yoshioka had been working for a music store and thinking about opening a shoe shop, but he stayed on because he was offered a piece of the business. The owners reneged, however, and Yoshioka resigned and opened a competing shop.
He kept going in to Harry's Music almost every day until he passed away in 1999, at age 90.
The business was kept in the family and is now managed by Harry Yoshioka's nephew Clayton. Son Emmett represents the current generation of musical Yoshiokas in Hawaii, a musician, composer and arranger, as well as musical director of Diamond Head Theatre. Wife Judy plays piano for local theater productions, and daughters Caroline, Stacy and Candace have all flirted with the stage.
"I grew up in the store, and when you're surrounded by music, you naturally fall into it," recalled Emmett Yoshioka. "You can't help but be affected!"
He gravitated toward the piano, and began performing in public while still a child.As a teenager, Yoshioka moved on to wind instruments, primarily the flute, and was second flutist in the Honolulu Symphony while still in high school.
At the University of Southern California, Yoshioka received bachelor's and master's degrees in composition and also taught undergraduate theory and composition.
He met his future bride, Judy -- a New Yorker whose father was a Mitch Miller singer -- and his military service following college was spent in the U.S. Military Academy Band at West Point as arranger, pianist, flutist and saxophonist and conductor of the Cadet Band. The only other Hawaii son to serve in the Army band was late orchestra leader Ken Kawashima.
Military service completed, Yoshioka returned to Honolulu. He was the only son, "and I was expected to run the family business," he explained. "My wife was from New York, and so we were from both ends of the earth. We do manage to go to New York as often as we can."
After a couple of decades of Emmett managing Harry's, even Harry felt his son was restless, and allowed him to withdraw from active participation in the store's daily affairs. "I wanted to write my own musicals, and Dad said, 'Go do your theater thing.' After all, my degrees were in composition, and I wanted to use those skills."
Since then, Yoshioka has become an award-winning musical director in several venues, usually at Diamond Head Theatre.
His credits include "A Little Night Music," "Chicago," "The Pirates of Penzance," "Jesus Christ Superstar," "Sunday in the Park with George," "Falsettos," "Cabaret" and "Crazy for You."
Yoshioka has also adapted, rewritten and composed original music for "Scrooge," a da kine-style production of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," and arranged the Peter Moon Band's recordings of "Harbor Lights" and "Spirit Lover."
"We mostly make a living teaching music. Our daughters are also becoming professionals; Caroline is becoming a clinical psychologist, Stacy is a dancer, and Candace just graduated from the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York."
Music, said Yoshioka, always helped his academics, and living in Hawaii always helped his music.
"You learn discipline as a musician, and the musicians in town who learned at Harry's are as professional as I've seen anywhere. We're all part of one big musical family, and family values is what my dad instilled in us. We have to keep music alive for the next generation."