COURTESY OF J.W. JUNKER Master ukulele performer Gordon Mark taught himself how to play the instrument.

On your Mark!

Gordon Mark finally goes public
with his talent on the ukulele

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By John Berger
jberger@starbulletin.com

Hawaii's contemporary ukulele virtuosos are, by definition, imaginative innovators who are taking the instrument far beyond its familiar role in traditional Hawaiian ensembles. But even by those standards, Gordon Mark is unique.

How else to describe a man who'll spend months or years transcribing a complicated piece of classical music so that it can be played on a four-string ukulele?

Strumming the holidays Daniel Ho Christmas Concert with guest Gordon Mark Where: The Doris Duke at the Academy, Honolulu Academy of Arts When: 7:30 p.m. tomorrow Tickets: $15 general; $12 students, seniors and academy members Call: 532-8700

"Bullheaded," Mark said in a phone interview on Monday.

He'd only just finished conducting an evening class for students of his method, the self-taught virtuoso said, adding that he's willing to share his knowledge but sometimes finds it's difficult to explain music as an intuitive experience.

"I've always said that unless I can feel what I'm doing, it's not correct. I can teach you how to play, but the most difficult thing that I have is to try to convey to them what to feel and how to feel what I feel. They can play it accurately and not make a mistake, but the salt and pepper isn't there, the Aji-No-Moto is missing, and this takes a period of time (to learn) and then, one day, we're going through a piece and, all of a sudden, they've got it. ... Unless you feel what you're doing, it's empty."

Mark, who recorded for the first time as one of the four virtuosos featured on "The Art Of Solo 'Ukulele" compilation that was released earlier this year, returns to the Honolulu Academy of Arts theater with some of his students for a concert with Daniel Ho tomorrow. One of his students plays violin, reads music and, Mark says, "knows more music theory than I'll ever know."

"We're doing 'The Carol of the Bells,' and throughout the whole piece we're all playing different parts. In fact, we're sometimes playing different chords, and because he plays music in an orchestra, he'll start to cringe because of all of these dissonant sounds. But it works."

MARK is one of the more reclusive and self-effacing of Hawaii's ukulele masters. Although he once played professionally at the Sheraton Moana Surfrider, Mark says that he has played primarily for his own enjoyment ever since he found a ukulele in a trash can "back in the Dark Ages."

"I grew up in an area or district where there wasn't a lot, so to speak, and so it was making do with what you had. Lucky for me, I found this instrument to get started," Mark said, adding that he has never taken any lessons and that he struggled at first before he finally figured out how to play a few chords.

"After that it was really doing it very quietly so you don't drive people nuts by having them hear the same thing over and over and over again. I just kept plugging away, and even all through high school and college, very, very few people knew I played. For some people, when you take some aspect of the arts, it becomes your own quiet moment, (and) I've never really commercialized what I've been doing."

His transcriptions of classical melodies are another facet of his private enjoyment of music. Mark says he discovered classical music early and enjoyed listening to it on the sly. ("In my neighborhood, you didn't listen to things like that.") After "just plunking around" playing with conventional songs, he decided to try playing classical melodies.

"The first movement to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony took me over a year (to arrange) because you have four strings with a limited octave, and you're trying to do something that a full symphony orchestra does. It's outrageous, but then it's a matter of wanting to do it so badly and then feeling at a certain point that if I'm able to do this -- and maybe it's a selfish kind of thing -- that nobody else is going to do it.

"I try to interpret, I change keys, I shift, I cheat a lot, just to make sure that the piece is still recognizable and I'm not offending anyone in the audience or the person who wrote it. Some things are kept quite close. It all depends on the piece itself."

Adding to the level of difficulty is the fact that Mark doesn't read music and must first listen to a piece until he's "separated the sounds" in his mind and hears what the different musicians are playing.

Ultimately, he says, it's about being one with the instrument.

"I'll sit and my chin is actually resting on part of the instrument and I kind of cradle it, and I can feel the vibrations coming out of the instrument ... feeling not only what's coming out of it as a sound, but feeling the instrument itself. I really believe that the instrument has its own kind of karma, its own kind of life ... and a part of me becomes absorbed into the instrument. When people ask me to sell one of my old ukuleles, I tell them it's like asking me to give up a child. There's no way."

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