Jake Shimabukuro Concert Review
I saw ukulele master Jake Shimabukuro for the first time at the San Francisco Jazz Festival last night. This was his second time performing at this festival and I hope the organizers continue to invite him back in the future. His performance was at the Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco. It's a gorgeous location for a concert, but probably a much larger venue than he's used to. He admitted being nervous as he talked to the audience at the start of the show, but he put on a fantastic performance. He performed solo last night -- just him and his ukulele.
For those of you who think of the ukulele as a toy instrument you find in Hawaiian airports or gift shops, you really should check out Jake's music. What he does on this instrument is completely mind boggling. But rather than describe his playing, I'll put some links to videos so you can see for yourself.
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Thriller
Crazy G
I don't have his full discography, so I wasn't familiar with everything he played. But he introduced almost every song he performed and he gave some delightful insights into his mindset when he wrote or arranged particular songs. As examples, he talked about how two of his childhood heroes, Bruce Lee and Eddie Van Halen, provided an East vs. West influence in writing his song Dragon. Also, he has performed as part of Jimmy Buffett's band. Jake described a conversation he had with Buffett's percussionist, Ralph MacDonald. They were talking about playing in an odd time signature, 9/8. Rather than the standard 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3 counting you would normally do in 9/8, Ralph showed him a pattern counted more like 1-2-3, 1-2, 1-2, 1-2. Using that idea as a framework, Jake went on to perform the song influenced by that conversation, Trapped.
The concert was broken down into two sets. After intermission, he started the second set with songs by one of his favorite rock groups, The Beatles. He started with In My Life, moving into Help!. He had a couple of pedal effects that he used for live looping -- he probably "recorded" about four or five successive tracks and continued to play layers on top of them, including an improvised solo. After the song, he gave a brief tribute to Les Paul, the pioneer who developed the overdubbing recording technique, who passed away earlier this year. Jake had actually performed with Les Paul earlier in his career and obviously counts him as an influence.
At the end of the second set, Jake left the stage to a standing ovation. The crowd absolutely loved his performance, and he obliged us with an encore. Much to my surprise (and probably most of the audience as well), he told us he would debut an arrangement that he was working on -- he said it wasn't quite ready for public consumption, but he was so thrilled to have a large supportive audience that he would bring it out. He even joked that he was really happy to have our support and that he hoped he would still have that support after we heard this work in progress. :-) He said when he began arranging the song, he had doubts he would finish it because the original has so many layers, and the ukulele only has a two octave range! But he did arrange it -- he said it was a song by the band Queen, and amazingly, the song was Bohemian Rhapsody! I couldn't believe it! We all waited with great anticipation, wanting to hear how he would play this incredibly complex piece of music. Some of his arranging choices were surprising and amusing, as evidenced by laughter from the audience during the performance. But we ate it up -- it was probably the most stunning and amazing accomplishment of the evening! Incredible arranging and playing -- he'd better release this on his next album!!! Another standing ovation for him as he left the stage and the house lights came up.
I often get into the technical aspects of the performance when I do concert reviews, so I'll keep that up here. The venue was almost too good acoustically for this performance. As you can imagine, a symphony hall will be designed to have great acoustics. For a single amplified ukulele, the echo was almost too long. But that's the only real "complaint" I had for the evening. It was quite the experience watching Jake do his thing onstage. His recordings don't really do him justice in terms of seeing/hearing his technique. His use of dynamics is so much greater and more effective live -- you don't really get the same feel listening to a recording. His technique integrates percussive sounds very effectively as well, which is perhaps not as surprising when you realize that his background included playing snare drum in high school marching band. He uses a muting technique at times as well, similar to the palm muting technique used on guitar, that comes across more obviously live than on recordings. But perhaps the one thing that stood out to me the most is how much his strings sustained clearly when he let them ring. This was especially apparently when he played harmonics -- they were as clear as a bell! On my personal uke (a Lyon [Washburn] concert model made of koa wood -- a decent model), it plays well but tone attenuates much more quickly. Same with harmonics. The tone on Jake's ukulele at times almost sounded like he was playing on steel strings. I suppose I may have to break down and get that $1000 Kamaka tenor model I've had my eyes on in order to get sound quality approaching Jake's! :-)
No question for me -- 5 stars out of 5 for this performance! Definitely catch Jake in concert if you get the chance!
For those of you who think of the ukulele as a toy instrument you find in Hawaiian airports or gift shops, you really should check out Jake's music. What he does on this instrument is completely mind boggling. But rather than describe his playing, I'll put some links to videos so you can see for yourself.
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Thriller
Crazy G
I don't have his full discography, so I wasn't familiar with everything he played. But he introduced almost every song he performed and he gave some delightful insights into his mindset when he wrote or arranged particular songs. As examples, he talked about how two of his childhood heroes, Bruce Lee and Eddie Van Halen, provided an East vs. West influence in writing his song Dragon. Also, he has performed as part of Jimmy Buffett's band. Jake described a conversation he had with Buffett's percussionist, Ralph MacDonald. They were talking about playing in an odd time signature, 9/8. Rather than the standard 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3 counting you would normally do in 9/8, Ralph showed him a pattern counted more like 1-2-3, 1-2, 1-2, 1-2. Using that idea as a framework, Jake went on to perform the song influenced by that conversation, Trapped.
The concert was broken down into two sets. After intermission, he started the second set with songs by one of his favorite rock groups, The Beatles. He started with In My Life, moving into Help!. He had a couple of pedal effects that he used for live looping -- he probably "recorded" about four or five successive tracks and continued to play layers on top of them, including an improvised solo. After the song, he gave a brief tribute to Les Paul, the pioneer who developed the overdubbing recording technique, who passed away earlier this year. Jake had actually performed with Les Paul earlier in his career and obviously counts him as an influence.
At the end of the second set, Jake left the stage to a standing ovation. The crowd absolutely loved his performance, and he obliged us with an encore. Much to my surprise (and probably most of the audience as well), he told us he would debut an arrangement that he was working on -- he said it wasn't quite ready for public consumption, but he was so thrilled to have a large supportive audience that he would bring it out. He even joked that he was really happy to have our support and that he hoped he would still have that support after we heard this work in progress. :-) He said when he began arranging the song, he had doubts he would finish it because the original has so many layers, and the ukulele only has a two octave range! But he did arrange it -- he said it was a song by the band Queen, and amazingly, the song was Bohemian Rhapsody! I couldn't believe it! We all waited with great anticipation, wanting to hear how he would play this incredibly complex piece of music. Some of his arranging choices were surprising and amusing, as evidenced by laughter from the audience during the performance. But we ate it up -- it was probably the most stunning and amazing accomplishment of the evening! Incredible arranging and playing -- he'd better release this on his next album!!! Another standing ovation for him as he left the stage and the house lights came up.
I often get into the technical aspects of the performance when I do concert reviews, so I'll keep that up here. The venue was almost too good acoustically for this performance. As you can imagine, a symphony hall will be designed to have great acoustics. For a single amplified ukulele, the echo was almost too long. But that's the only real "complaint" I had for the evening. It was quite the experience watching Jake do his thing onstage. His recordings don't really do him justice in terms of seeing/hearing his technique. His use of dynamics is so much greater and more effective live -- you don't really get the same feel listening to a recording. His technique integrates percussive sounds very effectively as well, which is perhaps not as surprising when you realize that his background included playing snare drum in high school marching band. He uses a muting technique at times as well, similar to the palm muting technique used on guitar, that comes across more obviously live than on recordings. But perhaps the one thing that stood out to me the most is how much his strings sustained clearly when he let them ring. This was especially apparently when he played harmonics -- they were as clear as a bell! On my personal uke (a Lyon [Washburn] concert model made of koa wood -- a decent model), it plays well but tone attenuates much more quickly. Same with harmonics. The tone on Jake's ukulele at times almost sounded like he was playing on steel strings. I suppose I may have to break down and get that $1000 Kamaka tenor model I've had my eyes on in order to get sound quality approaching Jake's! :-)
No question for me -- 5 stars out of 5 for this performance! Definitely catch Jake in concert if you get the chance!