Strings of Resilience: A Life Shaped by Music, History and Purpose
In a quiet neighborhood in North Seattle, Mari Horita picked up a violin at age six not because she loved it, but because her best friend did. The friend quit within months. She didn’t. Decades later, Mari — now a senior vice president for the National Hockey League’s Seattle Kraken —still plays. Not for a […]
Ken Teshima — Life Lessons and Training Put to the Test
A security camera on Saturday, July 29, 2023 captured a terrifying moment that in some ways Ken Teshima had been preparing his entire life for.
On that day, Teshima was struck by a car driven by Alfonso King, an unhoused man that Teshima had been helping by allowing him to park his car in the Torrance parking lot of his firm Accountonus at night. After a brief altercation with Teshima, King got into his car and drove it directly at Teshima, the collision sent the 67-year-old flying into the air, landing hard in a hedge and cracking his skull.
“A judo fall, being thrown by a person, is a lot slower than being hit by a car,” he said.
Hawaii’s Uta-Sanshin Master Grant “Masanduu” Sadami Murata: An Incredible Story About Identity
A typical night at Grant “Masanduu” Sadami Murata’s house consists of a group of his uta-sanshin students gathered on his covered lanai for their weekly practice. Uta-sanshin, the art of singing while playing the Okinawan three-stringed lute, is practiced four days a week, each night with a different group of students. They sit on folding […]
Sparking that musical appreciation: Family traditions bring community together through music
Lisa Joe was a natural musician from a young age. It wasn’t just her talent, her mother once said. It was her drive. Even when Joe was a child, she practiced the flute so much it drove her mom, an acclaimed music teacher, crazy. The Long Beach native started playing when she was 9, spending […]
Soji Kashiwagi and the Grace of a Traveling Theater Company
Soji Kashiwagi was 13 years old when the idea hit him. He was sitting in a Berkeley theater, quietly watching a play his father had written. The story was set in one of several incarceration camps where more than 120,000 people of Japanese descent – two -thirds of them U.S. citizens — were imprisoned during […]
Roy Sakuma: Laughter, Love and Hope
His name is synonymous with the ukulele, an instrument that transformed his life at age 16 leading him to a career as Hawaii’s foremost ukulele teacher, an award-winning record producer, and founder of the first ukulele festival which celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2020. Whether you’re talking story with the 74-year-old Sansei from the Makiki […]
Noel Okimoto: Rhythmic Roots
The genre of Jazz is usually associated with places like New Orleans or New York where musicians are steeped in the roots of the genre, but the authenticity of jazz permeates the world, perpetually inspiring music and players. In the few interviews we have of Pianist Bill Evans he touches on how improvisation and jazz […]
THE ARTS AS “FIRST-RESPONSE” TO OUR LIFE NOW Yukie Shiroma: Blends Okinawan, Modern and Experimental Dance to Create “Your (Own) Ballet”
THE DANCING INTELLECTUAL After four decades as a professional dancer gliding between the usually distinct worlds of contemporary Western dance, classical Uchinanchu udui and experimental stage performance, sansei Yukie Shiroma has much to say about the nature of tradition. “Up to now I feel like my life has been building up to a merging of […]
Loryce Hashimoto: The Soul of an Artist
Loryce Hashimoto is bubbly and enthusiastic, with an insatiable curiosity to try new things It seems she is often there, at a concert, a recital, Day of Remembrance, a play, utilizing her many artistic talents, whether dancing or playing the shamisen, or doing comedy — there’s Hashimoto giving it her all and putting on a […]
Hungry for Laughs: Female Trailblazers of Cold Tofu
In the 1980s, with so few opportunities in a competitive market of actors, women auditioned constantly for the chance to be on the screen for even a second to prove their acting chops. For women of color, another goal was to represent their multicultural communities. The comedic space was particularly closed: men were the marquee […]