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What the Heck?
John Heckathorn
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JOHN HECKATHORN
Angela Crandall, 19, debuted her new CD last weekend, with father Rich Crandall at the keyboards.
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Young Crandall shines at CD release party
Last week, Angela Crandall flew back to Georgetown University, where she's a sophomore studying foreign relations.
Before she went, she had a party. Some of the guests were Angela's fellow graduates from UH Lab School. Others were serious music types -- Rolando Sanchez of Salsa Hawaii; Don Gordon of Hawaii Public Radio; studio wizard Milan Bertosa, who, among other credits, recorded Iz singing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."
That's because the party celebrated the release of 19-year-old Angela's first CD, a collection of jazz vocals called "Shine."
For more than a decade, her father, pianist Rich Crandall, mounted weekly jazz concerts at Studio 6 in the Musicians' Union, with his daughter as featured vocalist.
"Starting in third grade, I'd learn and sing a new song every week," says Angela, who essentially grew up with a microphone in her hand.
At the party, while Angela's mother, Emi, set out pupus, her father ripped into the piano keyboard and Angela showed off her exquisite rhythmic timing on a couple of tunes: "Cry Me a River" and "Lullaby of Birdland."
"You know the difference between her and your average 19-year-old vocalist on a Jawaiian album?" Bertosa said. "She's a musician."
The Man With All The Questions
Who was the "Round Mound of Rebound"?
Who discovered that the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the two adjacent sides?
UBS Vice President Dan Shiu knows the answers (Charles Barkley, Pythagoras). It's the questions that trouble him.
Coming up Feb. 6, the local educational nonprofit, College Connection, puts on a lively fundraiser called "Quiz Bowl."
Teams of grown-ups -- friends or coworkers -- compete to answer questions about history, science, music, art, sports -- anything Shiu can come up with.
"A perfect question's hard enough to stump a team, but easy enough they should know it," Shiu says. He collects questions all year long on index cards and crams at the last minute in the Aina Haina Library.
If testing your knowledge against Shiu's questions sounds fun, you have until this Friday to gather a team, raise at least a $250 registration fee and call (866) 233-0777.
Grammy Whammy
It's one of my favorite parties of the year, the one Outrigger Hotels throws for the Hawaiian Grammy nominees. Raiatea Helm was there, stunning in a little black cocktail dress, and the room was filled with slack-key royalty: Cyril Pahinui, Dennis Kamakahi, Richard Ho'opi'i, Owana Salazar.
No Keola Beamer (who got around to telling people not to vote for him after voting was almost over, thereby having it both ways). And no Tia Carrere.
The background buzz in the room: Carrere will win. She's known on the mainland and hardly anyone in Hawaii votes for the Grammies, anyway.
"If she does, that's it for Hawaiian Grammy," said one insider. "We won't have to make all this fuss about it any more."
The Concert No One Knows About
Asked promoter Andrew Meader why I hadn't seen him in ages. "Because I've moved to upstate New York," he said, having gotten a national marketing gig for "Last Comic Standing."
Meader was back in town to put on a free concert with the Grammy nominees last Friday at HiSam -- "the concert no one seems to know about," as he put it.
If you missed it, it will be shown, in hi-def even, on KITV and OC16 on Jan. 28.
COURTESY PHOTO
Enoch Wood Jr.'s 1860 painting of Diamond Head will be on display in the restored Bishop Museum Picture Gallery.
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Hang 'em High At Gallery
There may be no one alive with a clear memory of the Bishop Museum's Picture Gallery. It closed in 1936.
Last Thursday, the first paintings began to go up on the walls of the gallery, newly restored to its 19th-century glory.
It wasn't a question of just getting the room ready. No one has seen the bulk of the museum's art collection in 70 years. "It's the world's finest collection of 19th-century Hawaii art, period," says Michael Horikawa, who's spent the last three years getting the paintings catalogued, cleaned, restored, reframed and generally ready for their close-ups.
Of course, filling a gallery is not entirely different from hanging art in a home. Horikawa's surrounded by picture wire, hooks, eyes, pliers, levels, tape measures. The museum's Dave Kemble climbs a ladder and hangs chains from the special molding near the ceiling.
Two paintings go up: Enoch Wood Perry Jr.'s 1860 view of Diamond Head and William Cogswell's contemporary portrait of Liholiho. There's much fussing to get things exactly, precisely level.
Then oops. An exit door that will need to stay open obscures the view of Liholiho. Down come those paintings, up goes Joseph Strong's view of Pearl Harbor in 1885, with only a few sailing ships and canoes.
Strong's long, narrow painting weighs about 80 pounds with its ornate frame, and it's nearly 7 feet long. It has to be carried by hand from the archives next door, and it won't fit in the new atrium elevator, so it has to be horsed up the stairs. "This sucks," says a young archivist, forced to bear most of the weight.
It won't do to drop it. This painting may not be priceless, but it's irreplaceable. Finally, it's up on the wall. Thirty more paintings to go. Opens to the public Saturday, worth seeing.
In Memoriam
Marian Tsuji, chief executive officer of Lanakila, asked if I'd mention the passing of her friend, Betty Hanson Becker, 87.
"There are not many women like Betty left in the world," wrote Tsuji. "How many women do you know who received a Bronze Star?"
That Betty Becker did, for service in WWII. You can read about her adventurous life with husband Jim in Jim's 2004 memoir, "Saints, Sinners and Shortstops."