It’s an interesting sensation to watch a performer step on stage alone with nothing but a tiny four-stringed instrument clutched in his hands. It’s funny the expectations one can conjure when about to listen to a solo show of ukelele as compared to, for instance, a guitarist, or any other solo instrumentalist.
Leave your expectations at the door, because this guy will blow them away. His name is Jake Shimabukuro (pronounced Shim-a-BOO-koo-row) and he is a wizard on the ukelele (pronounced oo-ka-LAY-lay, he says).
A 30-year-old Hawaiian-born transcendent virtuoso who has played with and opened for cats like Ziggy Marley, Fiona Apple, Blues Traveler and Jimmy Buffet, Shimabukuro will be bringing his uke and lightning fast fingers to Bremerton Oct. 12 for an evening at the Admiral Theatre.
Back by popular demand, it all starts with dinner at 6:30 p.m., followed by the show at 8 p.m.
Tickets are $32 (main floor reserved), $22 (loge reserved), $16 (balcony reserved) and $63 for a main floor show with dinner. For more information on that score visit www.admiraltheatre.org or call (360) 373-6743.
For more on the established and exciting stringer, read on and visit his website at www.jakeshimabukuro.com, or sample some tunes on the myspace at www.myspace.com/officialjakeshimabukuro. He’s also got a YouTube video of himself strumming the John Phillip Sousa masterpiece “Stars and Stripes Forever” at that address.
For anyone expecting the traditional hula music while Shimabukuro shakes his hips is in for an extreme surprise. While he does shake his hips now and again, while also banging his head and jumping up and down at times in the same energy-packed show, Shimabukuro’s ukelele is anything but traditional.
It’s all ukelele all the time, but the songs he plays are from across the musical board. For instance, on his latest CD — an EP titled “My Life,” on his own label Hitchhike Records — Shimabukuro covers Led Zepplin’s “Going to California,” Cindy Lauper’s “Time After Time” and the Beatles’ “Here, There and Everywhere.”
“Anybody can play different genres of music on any instrument,” Shimabukuro said. “The key is to make it sound authentic.”
The man’s love for the ukelele is authentic and apparent in his demeanor. At the age of four his mother gave him his first lesson and he was instantly hooked. That love grew into an intense passion to create and ultimately he turned it into his career, now touring the world he and his uke.
He’s played at the House of Blues in Los Angeles, B.B. King’s Nightclub in New York while also bringing his act to national television on The Late Show with Conan O’Brien, Last Call With Carson Daily, National Public Radio’s Morning Edition and beyond.
Demonstrating just how far beyond, earlier in September, Shimabukuro released the soundtrack he composed for the 2006 Japanese film “Hula Girls.”
With authority and conviction on the four-stringed, two-octave instrument, he can play the blues, he can play rock, he can strum classical, bluegrass and more as he continues his decades-long quest to transform the guitar often regarded as a tropical sounding novelty.
GRAY BOX:
Jake Shimabukuro, armed with his uke, will be performing a solo show at 8 p.m. Oct. 12 at the Admiral Theatre 515 Pacific Ave. in Bremerton. Dinner will precede at 6:30 p.m. Tickets for a the main floor show and dinner are $63, while the main floor show seats are $32, loge seats are $22, and balcony are $16. For more information on that score visit www.admiraltheatre.org or call (360) 373-6743.
For more on Shimabukuro visit his site at www.jakeshimabukuro.com.
