The KKHS Music Program Combined Winter Concert will be presented on Saturday at 6:30 p.m. at the school’s Performing Arts Center, with the Na Ali‘i Big Band, the Kekaulike Concert Choir and the Kekaulike Wind Ensemble.” Courtesy photo

Maui’s Chop Suey Jazz Orchestra and the Na Ali’i Big Band will celebrate the holidays with a free show at The Shops at Wailea on Friday. “We will have a mix of Christmas tunes and standard big band charts,” explained Casey Nagata, King Kekaulike High School’s music director and co-founder of the Chop Suey Jazz Orchestra. “The high school kids generally do more standards, and Chop Suey does more funk, rock, modern-style jazz.”

The Na Ali’i Big Band will also perform on Saturday at a King Kekaulike High School “Winter Concert,” also featuring the Kekaulike Concert Choir and the Kekaulike Wind Ensemble. “That will be more the Christmas stuff, not so much the jazz standards,” said Nagata. “The Wind Ensemble is playing a mix of tunes like ‘Sleigh Ride’ and ‘A Christmas Festival.” Those are like standards that every band on Maui has been playing for years.”

Other songs include “a tune called ‘Minor Alterations,’ like a creepy version of Christmas tunes, sort of a Halloweenified version. The choir is singing standards like ‘Carol of the Bells’ and ‘Pō Laʻi Ē,’ the Hawaiian version of ‘Silent Night.’ They’re doing a ‘White Winter Hymnal,’ a modern body percussion involved tune that was made famous by the a cappella group Pentatonix, and the jazz band is trimming down the full set to just Christmas tunes.”

The KKHS Music Program Combined Winter Concert will be presented on Saturday at 6:30 p.m. at the school’s Performing Arts Center, with the Na Ali’i Big Band, the Kekaulike Concert Choir and the Kekaulike Wind Ensemble.” Courtesy photo

One of Hawaii’s premier ensembles for traditional and contemporary big band-style jazz and swing, the Na Ali’i Big Band’s repertoire typically ranges from Count Basie to Maynard Ferguson. In recent years they have collaborated with or opened for such notable artists as the Katie Thiroux Trio, saxophonist Paul Contos (Dizzy Gillespie, Clark Terry), pianist Tommy James (Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton), trombonist Delfeayo Marsalis (Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, Elvin Jones, Branford Marsalis), and trumpeter Eric Miyashiro (Buddy Rich, Woody Herman).

Among King Kekaulike’s celebrated former students, trumpet player Tadashi Thomas, a rising star on the New York jazz scene, returned for a concert at the school in 2024. “When I got to high school, that’s when I was playing the trumpet,” he recalled in a Maui News interview. “I was playing in the jazz band and the wind ensemble, basically every ensemble at school. The catalyst for my career in jazz music was my high school band program led by Casey Nagata.”

Raised on Maui, Nagata loved jazz from an early age. “When I was growing up, I played saxophone and bass,” he recalled. “I got into jazz in college. As a bass player, I love Jaco (Pastorius). He introduced me to jazz bass and getting into jazz, and from a saxophone point of view, I love Gerry Mulligan and John Coltrane.”

Teaching music at King Kekaulike for 15 years, he noted, “They didn’t have a jazz band when I got here. I asked the kids, you guys want to start a jazz band? And they’re like, ‘Yeah, sure.’ We were able to turn that into a powerhouse right before COVID. And then COVID happened, and everything kind of died down. We’ve been trying to bring it back up to what it was.”

Nagata formed the Chop Suey Jazz Orchestra in 2009. A 20 plus-piece jazz band made up of local musicians, college students, high school students, and music educators, under the direction of Nagata, the ensemble performs around Maui.

Members include saxophone players Nagata, Siuai Laufou, Nathan Shaw, Todd Goldner, Alex Tesorio, and Beth Sederstrom; Max Gibson, Earl Andrews, Julius Galanto, Keith Cochrane, Marc Lefebvre, and Lee Taylor on trumpets; David Reid, Kamren Wakakuwa, Cody Sarmiento and Ryan Tesorio on trombones; guitarists Prem Brosio and Rusty Higa; keyboardists Max Jackson and Louise Lambert; bassists Patty Pearce and Rita Massey; drummers Perry Gragas and Larry Camit; and vocalists Mike Brown, Lambert, Lisa Porter and Lynette Zakabi.

The Chop Suey Jazz Orchestra and the Na Ali’i Big Band perform a free show at The Shops at Wailea on Friday at 5 p.m. The KKHS Music Program Combined Winter Concert is presented on Saturday at 6:30 p.m. at the school’s Performing Arts Center, with the Na Ali’i Big Band, the Kekaulike Concert Choir and the Kekaulike Wind Ensemble.”