JAZZ
COURTESY BOP TRIBAL
The core of Bop Tribal is made up of Reggie Padilla, left, Satomi Yarimazo, and DeShannon Higa.
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Quintessential
This weekend's concert at the Atherton Performing Arts Studio features one of many of jazz trumpeter DeShannon Higa's side projects.
BOP TRIBAL
Place: Atherton Performing Arts Studio, Hawaii Public Radio, 738 Kaheka St.
Time: 7:30 p.m. Saturday
Tickets: $20 general, $17.50 HPR members and $10 students with ID
Call: 955-8821
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Always busy with Royal Hawaiian Band and Honolulu Symphony Pops jobs, as well as guesting with seemingly every other local jazz musician's band on a regular basis, plus occasionally accompanying his singer-wife Rocky Brown on her own gigs, the ever-busy Higa will still manage to bring his Bop Tribal collective from downtown to the Hawaii Public Radio performance space.
Even as Higa has kept his grOOve.imProV.arTiSts and Quadpod groups performing on occasion, it seems there's more "juice" happening currently with his jazz quintet. Regularly featured at the Dragon Upstairs Saturday evenings (above Hank's Cafe Honolulu on Nuuanu Avenue), Bop Tribal will be releasing its debut album sometime in the fall. Higa, himself recently back from a Tokyo visit, hopes he'll be able to take the band out for a Japan tour.
Bop Tribal's core is made up of Higa, tenor saxophonist Reggie Padilla and pianist Satomi Yarimizo, with bassist Jon Hawes and drummer von (aka Adam) Baron rounding out the rhythm section.
Higa developed his chops during his New York City years from 2001 to 2004. Padilla, born and raised in New York, moved to Hawaii in early 2007 and has quickly become one of the most in-demand musicians on the local scene.
Yarimizo first came to the islands back in 2000 to work for a computer company. She's since focused on her music in earnest, especially after attending the intensive summer course at the Berklee College of Music in Boston in '05. She's been the house pianist at Dragon Upstairs since 2006.
Baron's musical alter ego is as the drummer for the Honolulu Jazz Quartet, and Hawes, after moving to Oahu's North Shore in 2003 from the East Coast, has played with Henry Kapono, Paula Fuga, Makana, Shawn Livingston Mosely and Stephen Inglis, among others.
While the band's main influence is in 1950s hard bop, it also weaves its way through modal jazz, bebop, post-bop and even some hip-hop. Yarimizo calls it "quintessential New York jazz, transported to the Honolulu stage."