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Feel the Island Breeze flow

The first non-Japanese to attain the rank of grand master of the shakuhachi bamboo flute, Riley Lee has been enthralling audiences with his mesmerizing playing for more than three decades.

Moving from Hawaii to Japan in the early 1970s, Lee spent years of deep and arduous training in traditional ways to master the instrument – including running barefoot in snow, and blowing his flute under waterfalls and in blizzards.

“My studies have at times been quite rigorous,” explains Lee rather humbly. “I’m still studying.”

This shakuhachi master will join Grammy Award-winning slack-key guitarist Jeff Peterson and taiko virtuoso Kenny Endo in concert on Friday in the McCoy Studio Theater at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center in Kahului, performing as Island Breeze.

The trio has released a self-titled CD, which was nominated for two Na Hoku Awards in 2015.

Acclaimed by the Sydney Morning for his “astonishingly pure, beautifully evocative” sound, Lee was first captivated by the shakuhachi in 1969, while attending Roosevelt High School on Oahu.

“My brother brought home an LP which featured a short solo by Yamamoto Hozan, the recently departed Living National Treasure,” he recalls. “I fell in love with the music, the sound or tone color, and the way the music, at least performed by Yamamoto, spoke directly to my soul. But I never imagined learning to play the shakuhachi until I happened to go to Japan in 1970.”

First traveling to Japan to work at the World Expo in Osaka, he returned a year later and began his flute studies. At the same time, he began playing taiko as a founding member of the legendary Japanese group Ondekoza (demon drum group), now known as Kodo.

By 1973, Lee had become the first non-Japanese to play taiko professionally, touring internationally with Ondekoza as a performer of the shakuhachi, yokobue (a high-pitched bamboo flute) and taiko.

In time he was honored as a recipient of two of the oldest and most venerated lineages of traditional shakuhachi, which can be traced back to the Zen Buddhist komuso (“priests of nothingness” or “monks of emptiness”) of the Edo period in Japan.

Lee has released more than 50 albums, including “Music for Zen Meditation,” “Postcards from Bundanon,” and more recently, “Shakuhachi Water Meditations.”

After moving to Australia to attain a doctorate at the University of Sydney, Lee would return regularly to Hawaii to perform and visit his parents and friends. On one of these trips, he connected with guitarist Peterson.

“I decided to try playing with a guitarist,” Lee explains. “Everyone recommended a young guitarist I hadn’t met before. It was Jeff. Our first concert was in Orvis Auditorium at UH Manoa, in the early 1990s. Working and making music with Jeff was effortless. And here we are, over two decades later.”

Guitar and shakuhachi is such an unusual combination, one wonders how he envisioned this cultural collaboration?

“As a shakuhachi player living outside of Japan, I have always had to work with unusual or at least nontraditional musical combinations,” he says. “Rather than a cross-cultural collaboration, I think of it as a version of the extremely common combination, that of strings and flute. I wasn’t however, expecting that it would work as well as it does. This was more to do with the people than the instruments, as well as Jeff’s original compositions and arrangements. The success of the combination has much or more to do with the specific people than with the instruments. While shakuhachi and guitar do complement each other, Jeff’s guitar with my shakuhachi playing is special.”

Fusing Hawaiian and Japanese influences, Lee and Peterson’s recordings include the instrumental albums “Maui Morning,” “Bamboo Slack Key,” “Haiku” and the Hoku Award-winning “Haleakala.”

Fitting with the title, their “Haleakala” CD mixed original instrumental compositions like the haunting “Manu O Ke Kai,” which reflected the Zen roots of Lee’s ancient instrument, with charming arrangements of classic Hawaiian songs.

“Slack-key guitar is very nahenahe, and the shakuhachi is often used for Zen meditation,” notes Peterson about the soothing quality of their music. “Riley often takes the role of the vocalist and the shakuhachi has a very clear vocal quality the way it’s controlled by the breath and you bend pitches like the human voice.”

From a duo, they expanded to a trio with the addition of taiko drummer Kenny Endo.

Originally trained as a jazz musician in the Asian-American cultural renaissance of 1970s California, Endo’s career included time with the renowned San Francisco Taiko Dojo, the first kumi daiko group outside of Japan. He has the honor of being the first non-Japanese national to have received a natori (stage name and master’s degree) in hogaku hayashi (classical drumming).

“I knew that taiko and shakuhachi could go together musically, depending on the pieces and the taiko players,” says Lee. “I had known about Kenny since the mid-1980s, after he began his graduate studies as UH. I can’t remember whose idea it was for the three of us to get together, but the combination was great.”

“We were excited,” says Peterson. “We thought about the music we could do, writing together and playing pieces that we had written individually that would work in the group. I’ve had many years working with Riley with Hawaiian music and Japanese music, so it was natural to add the taiko drums.”

“The success of our trio is due to the people involved,” says Lee. “Taiko players with the sensitivity and versatility that Kenny brings to his music are very rare. This combination of instruments would certainly have been a challenge with other musicians, but there was nothing challenging about making music with Jeff and Kenny.”

Blending beautifully on their “Island Breeze” CD, tracks range from the more obviously traditional Japanese-sounding “Jugoya” and “Spirit of Rice,” to the graceful, relaxing “Kilauea.” The album earned the trio Hoku nominations for Instrumental Album of the Year and Instrumental Composition for “Na Pali,” and the musicians were invited to play at the 2015 Na Hoku ceremony.

“It was an honor to be making history,” says Lee. “It was the first time either shakuhachi or taiko had been performed during the award ceremony.”

So what’s it feel like when they are playing together in concert?

“When we are actually playing together on stage, I’m not paying much attention to how I feel, I’m just putting my heart and soul into making the best music I can with Jeff and Kenny,” Lee says. “That of course, is probably true of any thoroughly pleasurable experience.”

For their Maui concert, they will feature music from “Island Breeze,” along with some songs from Peterson’s latest “Oahu” CD that are arranged for the trio, “and there are some great pieces that Kenny has written,” says Peterson.

*****

After wowing Maui audiences as an acoustic duo with his brother Thunder, Ron Artis II returns with an electric trio, Ron Artis II & The Truth, with drummer Stevon Artis and bassist Riley Pa’akaula, playing at Charley’s Restaurant & Saloon in Paia at 9 p.m. Sept. 2. If you previously enjoyed them in an intimate, acoustic setting, they are smoking-hot electric with Artis II’s Fender Stratocaster guitar sounding somewhere between Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimi Hendrix.

The trio is releasing a new EP, “Little People,” this week, which also features sisters PraiseJesus and Spirit on backing vocals, on a collection of funk, soul and rock-infused original songs. It will be available at their Charley’s show.

On Sept. 9, they will open for Jake Shimabakuro at a concert in Saratoga, Calif.

* Advance tickets for the event at Charley’s are $25, $20 and $15, and are available at www.rootsmusic.eventbrite.com.

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