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Upcoming Performance

 

David Paquette

with Special Guest Ken Emerson

Postponed - New Date to be Announced

Tickets $25.00

LOGAN HOUSE
at the Beatrice Wood Center for the Arts

David Paquette
Jazz Pianist, David Paquette

 

Ken Emerson
Guitarist, Ken Emerson

 

The Beatrice Wood Center for the Arts is pleased to present a performance by jazz pianist David Paquette on Saturday, June 20th, at 7pm. The performance will showcase David’s signature New Orleans style with a selection of jazz, blues and standards, performed on the German Steinway custom made for legendary classical pianist Lili Kraus. Paquette will be joined by Special Guest Ken Emerson.

David Paquette and Ken Emerson
David Paquette and Ken Emerson

David Paquette has recorded more than 45 albums and he is well known on the European jazz circuit, as well as for establishing and directing a seventeen-year running annual Jazz Festival on New Zealand's Waiheke Island. He devotes considerable time to his Charitable Trust, the "Paquette Jazz Foundation" which supports both upcoming and existing talent through a scholarship, mentoring program and a musician’s residence retreat on Waiheke Island.

Paquette's career as a pianist began during his university studies, when he transferred from New York to Louisiana State, inevitably inhabiting the piano bars and clubs around the city. He had lessons from the legendary Roosevelt Sykes, played the smoke-filled rooms for years and then hit the road. He lived and worked in Colorado and by the early 70s had a regular gig at the Boarding House in San Francisco, where he opened for the likes of Bette Midler, the Pointer Sisters, and Dr John.

In 1984, Paquette toured as the musical director for Spike Milligan throughout Australia, and what was intended as a short holiday in Maui led to a 10-year residency at the Pioneer Inn and a further roll call of famous names: Bonnie Raitt, Maria Muldaur, Kenny Loggins.

David Paquette Performing
David Paquette Performing

"In my life I have touched base with so many interesting people," Paquette says. "John McVie from Fleetwood Mac produced my first album. It was just before they did [their multimillion-selling '77 album] Rumours. I was at the studio when they did that album in Sausalito, California, because I knew Stevie Nicks. She used to come in and sing Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out at the Pioneer Inn with me. I've brushed up against all these people, some, like Boz Scaggs, are still friends, but I've never been famous and I don't want to be."

The life, however, came at a cost. A photograph of his rake-thin former self in '73 playing with Woody Allen was taken during "the amphetamine years" and by the early 80s he was drinking two bottles of tequila most days. Yet, as anyone who met him on his first visits to this country would testify, he was not only a prodigious drinker but an exceptional pianist and damn fine company.

"I gave it away all at once along with the drugs and smoking cigarettes," Paquette says of his sobriety. "But I had to, otherwise I wouldn't have made it."

Paquette has a creditable profile in the New Orleans music diaspora and heads back to New Orleans for his regular club dates during the Jazz and Heritage Festival, then to Paris, Holland, Switzerland and Senegal.

"I think it's great, the cycle of learning from black musicians in New Orleans, many of whom came from that French coast of Africa, and now I'm asked to play for a black audience in a jazz club in Dakar," he says. "That's a wacky circle, but it feels good."  

 
David Paquette performs "Without My Walking Stick" by Irving Berlin
and "Something" by George Harrison

 

Ken Emerson is one of the world's most highly regarded traditional Hawaiian slack key & steel guitarists living today. He is a monster player of both and he switches easily between them during his performances, laying his guitar on his lap and picking up a steel bar for an instrumental interlude. Emerson is famous for his one-of-a-kind slack/steel style playing of vintage acoustic steel bodied National Resonator guitars.

Emerson's unique playing style reflects the Hawaiian guitar's grassroots origins of over a century ago. He has developed his unique style through many musical genres. He has played his special blend of Blues/Jazz Hawaiian guitar for 40+ years. Born into a musical family, Emerson grew up with his fathers’ extensive record collection of jazz, swing, Hawaiian and world music styles.

Ken Emerson

Living in the San Francisco Bay Area, Emerson played the folk and blues songs of the early ‘60s, a lefty learning right hand finger-style techniques that led to his development as a finger-style picker. With the explosion of the San Francisco sound of the mid-later ‘60’s Ken also immersed himself into rock and electric blues styles. He was particularly drawn to bottleneck and slide guitar.

In 1968 Ken’s family moved to Hawaii. Absorbing the Hawaiian culture, Ken began studying Hawaiian language and music emulating the players of the 1920’s and ‘30s era by listening to vintage Hawaiian 78 rpm records, zeroing in on the jazz and blues styles of Sol Ho’opi’i and Sol K. Bright. Soon Emerson was playing alongside such legendary performers as Gabby Pahinui, Genoa Keawe, Raymond Kane, Moe Keale and Auntie Alice Namakuela.

Emerson won the prestigious Kahili Award for perpetuating Hawaiian culture, and was a featured artist and composer on the first-ever National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences Grammy Award winning Best Hawaiian Album. Emerson's playing was also featured on Donald Fagen's (Steely Dan) Grammy Award winning Morph the Cat. He has many additional touring/recording credits including Jackson Brown, Boz Scaggs, Charlie Musselwhite, Taj Mahal, and Elvin Bishop.

Emerson has helped lead the way in resurrecting the traditions of vintage Hawaiian music, tapping into classic jazz & blues influences along the way. Emerson has performed on at least a dozen Cord International - Hana Ola Records compilations with five solo releases on that label. Dividing his time between Kaua’i and San Francisco, Ken plays many Hawaiian venues and festivals and frequently tours the United States as well as Europe and Asia.

Tickets $25.00

Reserve your space today!

 

 

 

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