COURTESY OF HONOLULU SYMPHONY Keola Beamer, wife Moanalani and mother Nona Beamer share a few stories, dances and song when they perform with the Honolulu Symphony today and tomorrow.

Catching up with
Keola Beamer

A Pops concert coincides
with a new storybook

By John Berger
jberger@starbulletin.com

We caught Keola Beamer just in time Tuesday morning. Five minutes later and he would have been gone.

"I'm leaving for your island," he said from his Lahaina office, minutes before he was scheduled to leave for the airport. Beamer has been a Maui resident for years, but with a book to promote and two concerts with the Honolulu Symphony Pops orchestra this weekend, he decided to spend the week on Oahu.

If this is Friday, that makes it another busy week in an equally busy and productive year for the multi-Hoku Award-winning composer and recording artist. His recording career -- both as a charter member of George Winston's Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar Masters series and as an independent artist on his own record label, 'Ohe Records -- is keeping him in the forefront of the internationally recognized Hawaiian music scene. "Kiho'alu (Loosen the Key)," a superb feature-length documentary film on Beamer and his music, has been receiving awards and popular acclaim in film festival after film festival -- except, curiously, here at home, where the powers that be at the Hawaii International Film Festival didn't even consider it for a Golden Maile Award nomination in the documentary category.

There's more on Beamer's plate: "The Shimmering -- Ka 'Olili," his book of island stories, is due in local stores any day now (a review copy had not been received when this story was filed), and he joins Matt Catingub and the Honolulu Symphony Pops tonight and tomorrow night at the Blaisdell Concert Hall.

"We've got some nice new pieces that we haven't shared before, and we've worked very hard with Matt in getting some very nice arrangements. It's going to be a special evening," he said.

The program will include a new symphonic arrangement of the perennial favorite "Honolulu City Lights," embellished with hula by Beamer's wife, Moanalani. His famous mother, Nona Beamer, will do "a little bit of storytelling." (If previous shows, like last year's great summer night at the Waikiki Aquarium, are any indication, she may even do a hula or two as well.)

One of the most dramatic numbers with the Symphony Pops orchestra will feature Moanalani in a dark, old story about a woman with no arms or legs who receives a beautiful lei. Moanalani, performing as if she herself has no appendages, takes the lei in her teeth and flips it over her head.

"It's a very emotional kind of storytelling. It's difficult to perform, actually," her husband said.

Storytelling is a Beamer family tradition, and the new book is his contribution.

"It's a contemporary, 21st-century take on Hawaiian storytelling, so you've got the currents of ancient philosophy and ancient tradition combined with how these interfaced in the 20th century," he said.

"I worked hard on it for a couple of years, slowly writing and putting the project together while working on my music at the same time. I'm very proud of it."

Special arrangements Keola Beamer with Matt Catingub and the Honolulu Symphony Pops Where: Blaisdell Concert Hall When: 8 p.m. today and tomorrow Tickets: $15 to $57 Call: 792-2000

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