Shakuhachi master Riley Lee will perform Dec. 13 at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center. Courtesy photo

The first non-Japanese to attain the rank of Grand Master of the shakuhachi bamboo flute, Riley Lee has been mesmerizing audiences with his spellbinding playing for decades.

Teaming with Grammy Award-winning Hawaiian slack key guitarist Jeff Peterson and taiko virtuoso Kenny Endo, as the trio Island Breeze, Lee performs at the MACC on Dec. 13. They previously released a self-titled CD, which ranged from traditional Japanese sounding tracks like “Jugoya” and “Spirit of Rice,” to the graceful “Kilauea.” The album earned Island Breeze Hōkū nominations for Instrumental Album of the Year and Instrumental Composition for “Na Pali.”

Lee first collaborated with Peterson in the early 1990s. Fusing Hawaiian and Japanese influences, their recordings include the instrumental albums, “Maui Morning,” “Bamboo Slack Key,” “Haiku,” and the Hōkū 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. From a duo, they later expanded to a trio with the addition of taiko drummer Kenny Endo.

“Jeff and I had quite a repertoire already before Kenny joining us, and Kenny had his own compositions,” says Lee about their combined repertoire. “There’s a couple of pieces where they have really very complex percussion rhythms. Fast is not my forte. At that point, you just pull back, you float, you’re the bird soaring over all this stuff that’s happening underneath. Oftentimes, we hardly have to discuss anything. It’s amazing how well we just fit. We have the same sensibilities and we trust each other musically”

Acclaimed by The Sydney Morning Herald 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 this LP, and he said ‘have a listen to this.’ On this LP was some shakuhachi. I fell in love with the sound. The sound of the shakuhachi just really appealed to me.”

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.

“I was a founding member,” he says. “I joined the group before they even had the name Kodo.”

Moving from Hawaii to Japan in the early 1970s, it took Lee years of arduous training in traditional ways to master the instrument, including practicing barefoot in snow, and playing his flute under waterfalls and in blizzards. “If you want to do this thing, this is what’s involved, but it was fine,” he says. “It’s not that you enjoy it, but it’s no big deal. I was going to be there for three months and I stayed for 7 years. I’ve often said the shakuhachi chose me.”

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 “monk of emptiness”) of the Edo period in Japan.

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

He most recently released a three-CD collection, “Breath of the Earth,” interpreting the music of 12th-century German visionary Hildegard of Bingen. “It’s real spacey music,” he explains. “It is like traditional shakuhachi music in that there’s no beat, it flows. I got these transcriptions by Beverly Lomer. I was in a recording studio and had booked the day, and I finished what we meant to do. The recording engineer said you might as well do something, don’t waste the time. So I recorded three CDs worth of Hildegard in an afternoon, one after another. I didn’t have to repeat pieces because I just knew them.”

Teaming occasionally for concerts, the Island Breeze trio recently played on Kauai. “People came up to me and said they were surprised how moved they were our music,” Lee says. “One guy said, ‘I know this sounds strange and weird, but your music touched me in such a way I started crying.’ That happens. I start crying sometimes when I’m playing my own pieces. He says, ‘you know my dream or my goal, what would really make me feel good is if your music could be being played as I die.”

Island Breeze performs in the MACC’s McCoy Studio Theater on Dec. 13 at 7 p.m. Tickets are $30, $45, and $75 plus applicable fees, available at mauiarts.org.