Definition of the word HAPA :

1) Hawaiian word for “half”

2) A person of mixed Pacific Islander ancestry. If an individual has one parent whom is a Pacific Islander, and one parent whom are of an ethnicity outside of Pacific Islander, they would generally be considered “Hapa”

3) A Musical Duo from Hawaii that consists of one member of South Pacific Ancestry and one guy from New Jersey.

Often encapsulated as the “Sound of Maui” or the “Soundtrack of Hawaii” the music and sound of the group HAPA evokes a place that many people have referred to as heavenly. The sound? Expect to hear hypnotic, liquid guitar runs woven around clear, tenor Hawaiian vocals and immaculate harmonies driven by poetic lyrics exulting the rapture of the Hawaiian landscape, History and Mythology. Just add to this a dose of American Folk-Rock, you have what has been described, as “the most exciting and beautiful contemporary Hawaiian music the world knows” (Maui Times). The overriding quality of their music is one of passion, beauty and serenity, found in the majestic tones of the oli (chant), mele (song) and the exhilarating innovative sounds of virtuoso Guitar performances. “Masterful” is how Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Stephen Stills describes the groups Guitar skills.

The group’s recordings have infused fearless and brilliant production while weaving unique, inventive elements of sound and textures into their intricate South Pacific tapestry. Over the years this has included adding such diverse instruments on their recordings as the Irish Uillian Pipe, Hawaiian Pahu Drum and the Electric Sitar. Guest appearances have included friend and Folk Rock icon Kenny Loggins singing in the Hawaiian Language; Internationally recognized Slam-Poet and Storyteller Kealoha; to the final recorded vocal performance by the “King Of Hawaiian Entertainment” Don Ho. “Complex, sophisticated and flawlessly conceived and engineered, HAPA concerts and recordings are as elaborate and visceral as today’s Hawaii” (Kauai Times) These disparate ingredients blended together musically in the Pacific emote the unique flavor of what Hawaii and HAPA music is: “Beautiful, fragile, spiritual, powerful” (Los Angeles Times).

Their music has appeared in countless National TV shows and feature films, and the group was showcased in a PBS Documentary hosted by Peter Fonda, who describes Hapa as “The music of my Bali Hai”. National Geographic kicked off their “Geo Sessions” music series with profiles on the group and Ben Harper. HAPA was the first Hawaii Musical act to be given to honor of being introduced and performed as themselves on the smash Television series, “Hawaii 5-0”, performing their song “Olinda Road” which closed the first season’s finale. An estimated 25 million viewers watched the show and its re-broadcast. “Since my initial move to Hawaii to appear on “Lost”, the HAPA song “Olinda Road” will always remain the Soundtrack for my Hawaii-life” (Daniel Dae Kim).

HAPA’s self-entitled debut Cd released in 1993 became the biggest selling Cd by a group or duo in the history of recorded Hawaiian music. The group’s debut Cd changed the tide and thus terminology of music from Hawaii, since it was the first Cd to establish itself outside of the musical category “Hawaiian Music” and be referred to as “World Music” by Billboard Magazine in 1993. All follow up Cd release have debuted in the Top Ten of the Billboard Magazine World Music Chart. The group’s ground breaking music has established them as the most recognized name in Hawaiian Music internationally since their debut release, continuing their 20 year touring tradition of selling out intimate Supper Clubs, Showcase Rooms, Festivals and Performing Art Centers from Tokyo to Sydney to New York.

The blend of their original vocal sound was originated on a wooden picnic bench in the beautiful little beach town of Lahaina on the island of Maui in the early 1980’s. It has travelled far in 30 years, as Rolling Stone Japan recently described them as “Titans of the Genre”. Don Ho predicted in 1993: “What HAPA means and what their message is will touch and inspire millions”.

Long Beach Camerata Singers was founded in 1966 by Frank Allen as the Vocal Arts Ensemble and served as the resident chorus for the Long Beach Bach Festival, which he founded in 1975.  In 1983, Dr. David Wilson, a professor of choral music at USC, succeeded Frank Allen and led the choir for over twenty years, expanding the Camerata Singers’ repertoire and choosing its name.  Under his baton, the chorus toured Europe in 1999 and 2005.  CSULB choral director Dr. Jonathan Talberg was appointed artistic director in 2005.  He added a core of professional singers to the ranks and led a second European tour in 2006.  From 2009 to 2017 Dr. Robert Istad, director of choral studies at CSU Fullerton, led the choir as its artistic director, expanding the auditioned ensemble to 90 voices and raising the group to the professional-quality level for which it is known today.  Dr. James K. Bass joined the organization in 2017, bringing new partnerships with his position as director of choral studies at UCLA and associate conductor of the Miami-based professional chamber choir, Seraphic Fire.   

In 2015 the choir established an artistic partnership with the Long Beach Symphony Orchestra to serve as its official chorus.  Long Beach Camerata Singers also performs regularly with other arts organizations, including Musica Angelica Baroque Orchestra, the Pacific Symphony,  Long Beach Opera, Long Beach Youth Chorus, and the South Bay Children’s Chorale. 

Currently in its 57th season, the Long Beach Camerata Singers offers the Peace Project in the fall, performances of Handel’s Messiah in December, a masterwork concert in the spring for ChoralFest Long Beach, closing the season with June’s Evening of Song showcase event.  In the current season LBCS will perform twice with the Long Beach Symphony, both for Holiday Pops concert and a March performance of Carmina Burana. 

In November, 2022, Camerata’s new all-professional group, The Catalyst Chamber Ensemble, will present its inaugural concert with a performance of Considering Matthew Shepard.  Catalyst will present a spring recital featuring  an a cappella concert entitled “From Spain to the New World.”

LBCS offers three education programs.  The Camerata Children’s Music Academy provides fundamental music education for 2 to 5 year old children at Young Horizons Child Development Centers, a state sponsored child care facility for economically-challenged children with 5 locations.  Peace4Youth brings the Peace Project to LBUSD middle schools, where the choral students perform for their peers along with Camerata singers.  The Choral Scholars initiative offers paid internships to promising choral students enrolled at local colleges to sing with the chorus as members of the professional core. 

During the Covid Pandemic, LBCS presented quartets in free, outdoor, socially-distanced concerts at private homes throughout Long Beach, allowing patrons an opportunity to enjoy live music at a critical time of need.  These initial, casual concerts turned into a 30-concert series called the Front Porch Concerts in the 2020-2021 hiatus season.  The popularity of the program resulted in a new summer program that is presented annually in June and July. 

As a freelance violinist I have had the opportunity to travel all over the world playing all types of music. From performing solo recitals in Europe to playing electric violin with Gnarls Barkley in sold out arenas across the US, from joining the Pacific Symphony for their European tour to performing shows as a Guest Entertainer on cruise ships all over the world, I feel very lucky to be able to be so versatile. When I’m not traveling I am in Los Angeles playing with many of the regional orchestras, including Santa Monica Symphony, Long Beach Symphony, and Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra, and I have also recorded for film and television, as well as performed on The Voice, American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, and many other television shows. I am grateful to have shared the stage with some of the world’s most beloved musicians, including Yo Yo Ma, Paul McCartney, Barbara Streisand, Josh Groban, Ray Charles, Norah Jones, Christina Aguillera, Johnnie Mathis, and many others.

Violinist Agnes Gottschewski grew up in a family of musical amateurs where playing chamber music for fun was a frequent event. Even now, as a professional violinist she enjoys reading chamber music with friends. She has coached at Chamber Music Workshops in Santa Ana and Santa Barbara.

She has been a frequent guest artist with Camerata Pacifica for many years, and a regular chamber music artist at the Sitka Summer Music Festival in Sitka, Alaska since 1997. Other recent chamber music performances have been with the High Desert Chamber Music Festival in Bend, Oregon; the Sitka Music Festival’s Autumn Series in Anchorage, Alaska; and El Paso Pro Musica, El Paso, Texas, as well as performances at the Methow Valley Chamber Music Festival in Washington State.

For several years she was a member of Southwest Chamber Music, playing many premieres of contemporary chamber music and recording several CDs, including their Grammy ­winning Complete Chamber Works of Carlos Cha´vez. She has also been an artist faculty member at the chamber music festival, Aberystwyth MusicFest (Wales/England).

Agnes presently holds the position of assistant concertmaster of the Long Beach Symphony and has been a member of Pacific Symphony’s first violin section since 1996. She teaches at Long Beach City College and is an active studio musician.

Agnes is originally from West Berlin, Germany, where she started playing the violin at age 6. After receiving an undergraduate degree from Berlin’s Hochschule der Künste, she moved to Southern California for graduate studies at the University of California, San Diego where she concentrated on contemporary music; and at the University of California, Santa Barbara where she was a member of the graduate string quartet in residence.

When not busy rehearsing, recording or performing music, Agnes spends time at a pottery studio making mostly functional ceramics, making jewelry, going walking or hiking with her husband and her dog, or spending an occasional evening at home.

Long before she became known as a Golden Globe-nominated actress, Ringwald was singing. She started performing with her pianist father’s jazz band when she was three and she has never stopped.

“I had quite the musical repertoire,” she recalls with a laugh. “It was pretty much traditional jazz but there was some Bessie Smith and Helen Kane, the original Betty Boop.” Talk with Ringwald for even a short amount of time and it’s clear her grasp of jazz and its history comes from a lifelong study of the form and the great singers who inspired her, including Smith, Ella Fitzgerald, Blossom Dearie and Susannah McCorkle.

“Blossom Dearie was the only one I got to see live. Susannah’s recordings have really influenced me. I think she was really special in her gifts of interpretation and how much humanity she brought to the songs.” However, the time wasn’t right until now. Paul Mazursky cast the then 13-year old in “Tempest,” and for the next few decades, her public focus was on acting, as she starred in such films as “Fresh Horses,” “Betsy’s Wedding,” “King Lear,” “The Pick-Up Artist,” and, of course, her trio of films with John Hughes, “Sixteen Candles,” “The Breakfast Club” and “Pretty In Pink.” “Once I started to act I felt like I had to make that decision,” she says. Plus, during the ‘80s, “I didn’t think there was a place for the music that I was interested in,” she says. “There was no Madeline Peyroux, Diana Krall, Norah Jones… I didn’t feel like anybody was going to listen to the kind of music that I wanted to sing. I thought, I’ll just keep singing with my dad and focus on my acting.”

Ringwald recorded Except Sometimes with Peter Smith, who also produced, on piano, Clayton Cameron on drums, Allen Mezquida on alto saxophone, and Trevor Ware on bass. Together, they put a new spin on such jazz and musical standards as “The Very Thought of You,” “I Get Along Without You Very Well (Except Sometimes),” “I’ll Take Romance,” “Sooner or Later,” and “Where Is Love.” “It was really hard to narrow it down,” she says, of selecting the album’s 10 tracks. “It was basically songs that I felt connected to and songs that I felt we played together well as a band. As much as I love traditional jazz, my real interest is more modern, more from the Great American Song Book.”
– See more at: http://www.iammollyringwald.com/music/#sthash.klnP7ElO.dpuf

Sean O’Loughlin (b.1972) is the Principal Pops Conductor of Symphoria, the exciting new symphony in Syracuse, NY and the newly appointed Principal Pops Conductor of the Victoria Symphony in Victoria, B.C. Canada. He is a fresh voice and a rising name in the music world. His music is characterized by vibrant rhythms, passionate melodies, and colorful scoring. Commissions from the Boston Pops Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra highlight and showcase his diverse musical abilities. As a conductor, he has led performances with the Boston Pops Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, the Chicago Symphony, the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Dallas Symphony, the Vancouver Symphony, the Atlanta Symphony, the Baltimore Symphony, the Houston Symphony, the Victoria Symphony and the Seattle Symphony amongst others. He was the assistant conductor and arranger for a production of Sgt. Pepper Live in Las Vegas featuring the band Cheap Trick. He has served as conductor for national and worldwide tours with Josh Groban, Sarah McLachlan, and the Jerry Garcia Symphonic Celebration. He has also appeared on ABC’s Good Morning America with Josh Groban and NBC’s “A Very Pentatonix Christmas.”

Recent collaborations include such artists as Sarah McLachlan, Adele, Josh Groban, Pentatonix, Steven Tyler and Joe Perry, Kelly Clarkson, Diana Ross, Journey, Melissa Etheridge, Blue Man Group, Janelle Monáe, Audra McDonald, Hall and Oates, Gloria Estefan, the Indigo Girls, Diana Krall, Itzhak Perlman, Natalie Merchant, Chris Isaak,  Pink Martini, Brandi Carlile, The Decemberists, Martina McBride, Josh Ritter, Gloria Gaynor and others. The Los Angeles Times calls his orchestrations “…magnificent and colorful” while adding “…even more dimension…” to the compositions. Daily Variety heralds Sean’s writing as “most impressive …” with a “wide range of coloring in the orchestra…” that “…adds heft and rolling energy.

Through his growing number of commissioned and published works, Sean is excited to continue contributing to the rich history of orchestral and wind band literature. His music is published by Carl Fischer and Hal Leonard. He is a frequent guest conductor with professional orchestras and honor bands around the country. An annual ASCAP Special Awards winner, Sean was a composition fellow at the Henry Mancini Institute in Los Angeles and holds composition degrees from New England Conservatory and Syracuse University.

MARCIA DICKSTEIN, renowned harpist, is enticing new audiences to harp in chamber music and harp solo with orchestra, and inspiring composers to write new works in classical and jazz genres. As Founder/Artistic Director of The Debussy Trio, she has performed worldwide, in the United States, Canada, Europe, Scandinavia, and Japan, over NPR radio, on commercial & PBS television.

Adjunct Professor of Harp at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and Westmont College, Santa Barbara, CA, Marcia holds master classes throughout the United States and maintains a private studio in Los Angeles. Her transcriptions and scholarly editions of solo and chamber music for professional and student harpists are published by Fatrock Ink .

Marcia has been featured as solo and chamber music harpist at festivals, in film and television, and as a recording artist. Her most recent recordings are “Look Ahead” (Klavier label), which features 10 new works especially written for The Debussy Trio (Klavier label) and “Chill Dog” (Pupsnap Music).

Recently cited by the New York Times for her “especially lovely” singing, Elissa Johnston enjoys diving into repertoire ranging from Bach, Handel and Mozart to Messiaen, Carter and Reich.

Elissa appears this season with the National Symphony of Costa Rica singing Canteloube’s Chants d’Auvergne, with Albany Symphony in Michael Daugherty’s To the New World, with Long Beach Symphony in Brahms Requiem, with the Riverside Philharmonic in Berlioz Les Nuits d’éte, and in Peter Sellars’ touring production of Music to Accompany a Departure, which opened the 2023 Salzburg Festival. Elissa will also sing in American Ballet Theater’s North American premiere of Woolf Works, music by Max Richter, this Spring at Segerstrom Hall. Recent performances include the world premiere and recording of James MacMillan’s Fiat Lux with Pacific Symphony, Die Staat by Louis Andriessen, conducted by John Adams with the L.A. Philharmonic, Poulenc Gloria at the Palau de la Musica in Barcelona, arias by Handel and Scarlatti with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and performances with Street Symphony in Bach’s Wedding Cantata No. 202. Elissa has frequently appeared as soloist with the Los Angeles Master Chorale, in Handel’s Dixit Dominus, the west coast premiere of Reena Esmail’s This Love Between Us, and in Stravinsky’s Les Noces. As a member of the ensemble, she also appeared in Peter Sellars production of Di Lasso’s Lagrime di San Pietro under Grant Gershon, in performances worldwide, including at the Salzburg Festival, the Ravinia Festival, Melbourne International Arts Festival and the Auckland Arts Festival. She made her Carnegie Hall debut with the Pacific Symphony under Carl St. Clair, singing the role of Sarada Devi in Philip Glass’ The Passion of Ramakrishna, as part of Carnegie’s yearlong celebration of Philip Glass’ 80th birthday.

Elissa is especially fond of singing chamber music and in recital, and has appeared numerous times with Le Salon de Musique, Pittance Chamber Music, Salastina, Jacaranda Music, Sunset Chamber Music, Piano Spheres and Southwest Chamber Music. She sang in the quartet version of David Lang’s Little Match Girl Passion, sharing a program with Eighth Blackbird at the Ravinia Festival, and has performed Messiaen’s epic song cycle HARAWI numerous times with pianist Vicki Ray.

Elissa can be seen in the Los Angeles Philharmonic Soundstage live capture recording of John Adams’ Grand Pianola Music, under Gustavo Dudamel at the Hollywood Bowl, and can be heard in recordings of Chinary Ung’s

AURA on Presto Classical, and SPIRAL XII on Bridge Records, James Newton’s Mass and In a Moment, in the Twinkling of an Eye in James Newton: Sacred Works on New World Records, Danny Elfman’s Serenada Schizophrana on Sony BMG Masterworks, Jorge Liderman’s Song of Songs on Bridge Records, and on numerous film soundtracks.

Renowned for her insightful interpretations and thrilling performances, New Zealand-born conductor Gemma New currently serves as Music Director for the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra in Ontario, Canada, Associate Conductor for the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, and Founder and Director of the Lunar Ensemble, a contemporary music collective in Baltimore, Maryland. For the 2015-16 season, Ms. New has additional engagements with several ensembles, most notably the Long Beach and Toledo Symphonies, and the Chamber Orchestra of San Antonio.

As one of two Dudamel Conducting Fellows with the Los Angeles Philharmonic for the 2014-15 Season, Ms. New led nine LA Phil ‘Symphonies for Youth’, ‘Symphonies for Schools’, and ‘Community’ concerts and covered frequently for their Music Director, Gustavo Dudamel, Conductor Laureate Esa-Pekka Salonen and other guest conductors. For the month of September 2014, at the invitation of Maestro Kurt Masur, Ms. New resided in Leipzig, Germany as a Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Fellow, where she studied Mendelssohn’s music under Maestro Masur and led the Leipziger Symphonieorchester in the historic Lindensaal of Markkleeberg.

In recent seasons Ms. New has guest conducted several orchestras, including the Atlanta and Miami Symphonies in the USA, as well as the Christchurch Symphony and Opus Orchestras in New Zealand. In 2013 Ms. New made her Carnegie Hall conducting debut, leading works by Adams, Norman and Ives on the American Soundscapes series. That same year she was selected as the David A. Karetsky Conducting Fellow at the American Academy of Conducting at the Aspen Music Festival. One year prior Ms. New was awarded the Ansbacher Fellowship, in which she was selected by members of the Vienna Philharmonic to take up residence at the Salzburg Music Festival.

Under her leadership, the Lunar Ensemble has premiered almost 40 works since 2011 and held composition residencies at several US universities, including the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore MD, Frost School of Music in Miami FL and Tulane University in New Orleans LA. Another Lunar Ensemble highlight was the Pierrot Centenary Project, which united all fifty poems of Albert Giraud’s Pierrot lunaire through commissioned works by selected composers, culminating in the release of Lunar’s first album, featuring those works alongside Schoenberg’s seminal Pierrot lunaire.

Ms. New’s operatic conducting focuses on contemporary repertoire by composers such as Jake Runestad, Emily Koh and Joanna Lee. She has also worked on several operas by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, as well as Giuseppe Verdi’s Il Trovatore and L’enfant et les sortilèges by Maurice Ravel.

Passionate about music education, Ms. New has enjoyed working with the NJSO Academy Orchestra and New Jersey All State Orchestra during her time as Associate Conductor for the NJSO. Between 2007 and 2009, Ms. New conducted the Christchurch Youth Orchestra, which grew from 40 to 70 players under her leadership and performed upwards of nine concerts a year.

Ms. New holds a Master of Music degree in orchestral conducting from the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, where she studied with Gustav Meier and Markand Thakar. She graduated from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand with a Bachelor of Music (Honors) in violin performance.

For three decades, the GRAMMY®-nominated pianist/composer/ arranger David Benoit has reigned supreme as one the founding fathers of contemporary jazz. But, like an actor who has been known primarily for one role, he wanted to show other dimensions of his artistry, influenced by Stephen Sondheim, Burt Bacharach, Dave Grusin and Leonard Bernstein.

“I’ve done records where I had a token vocal tune, all the way back to my first album,” Benoit says. “But I never did an entire record [with vocals]. So the thought here was to do something really different.”

The result is Benoit’s thirty-fifth recording as a leader and his first with a vocalist. 2 In Love, set for release on June 16, 2015 via Concord Records, features Jane Monheit, the GRAMMY®- nominated, cool-toned chanteuse from New York, who burst on the scene in 1998 as the first runner-up in the Thelonious Monk International Vocalist Competition.

“Concord suggested Jane Monheit,” Benoit says. “She was the perfect vocalist. I like to make records a certain way: I prefer to go in live and record it all at once. And a lot of vocalists can’t do that: they need to edit, fix and use auto-tune. But Jane doesn’t need to do any of those things. Many of the keys were difficult, but she sang everything live. Jane also has a background in Broadway, which is another part of my lexicon that I’ve not explored. She was up to the task and easy to work with. She made it a complete, perfect package.”

Along with Monheit, Benoit also enlisted the help of three lyricists: Mark Winkler, Lorraine Feather and Spencer Day. “Mark is my long-time collaborator,” says Benoit. “And I’ve known Lorraine (daughter of jazz critic Leonard Feather) for thirty-five years. Then, there’s Spencer Day: I was really impressed with him. What a nice, young man and fantastic singer. He brought some new blood to the table.” This terrific triad breathed lyrical life into Benoit’s songs and helped showcase Monheit’s considerable skills as an interpreter. “I met them all,” she says. “They did great work and made it very, very easy for me to do my job.”

Supported by an alternating rhythm section featuring drummers Jamey Tate and Clayton Cameron, percussionist Lauren Kosty, guitarist Pat Kelley and bassists David Hughes and John Clayton (of the Clayton Brothers), Benoit and Monheit swing and sing on ten tracks imbued with, to use Duke Ellington’s elegant phrase, “the feeling of jazz” in ballad, mid-tempo, neo- classical-, Latin-, pop- and Broadway-styled genres that range from the bossa nova-buoyed title track to the optimistic, piano-driven “Love Will Light the Way.” Violinist Michelle Suh and cellist Cathy Biagini add their impressionistic airs to the waltz “Dragonfly,” the evocative, 5/4 time-signatured “Something’s Gotta Give” – originally from a play co-written by Benoit and Winkler about Marilyn Monroe – and “The Songs We Sang,” a beautiful melancholy ballad, originally titled “Out of Tune,” about a couple that wrote hit songs and are trying to reignite their magic.

On the ebullient “Fly Away,” Monheit flexes her considerable vocal muscles. “I had a really great time wailing on that one,” she says, “because it’s a style of music that I don’t often get to sing.”

“Barcelona Nights,” is pulsed by an infectious Latin groove, which was inspired by a visit to Spain by Benoit and his wife. “I talked to Lorraine about it,” Benoit says, “and she came up with a beautiful lyric.” On the Pat Metheny-esque “Love in Hyde,” which was previously published under the title “A Moment in Hyde Park,” Benoit showcases his spirited piano prowess. “I recorded it on my second album, Life Is Like a Samba, with a big orchestra. And I always wanted to redo it,” he says. The album concludes a heartfelt solo piano performance of “Love Theme from Candide”/”Send in the Clowns,” by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim, dedicated to the memory of Benoit’s mother, Betty June Benoit (1929–1997).

“Those were my mom’s two favorite songs,” Benoit says. “My friend David Pack (who started the group Ambrosia) introduced me to Lenny, and we worked on a benefit concert at Carnegie Hall. I got to know him a bit. So it was always my destiny to do something with “Candide.” And I felt it would make a nice segue into “Send in the Clowns.”

In addition to his obvious skills as a soloist, 2 In Love also highlights Benoit’s overlooked gifts as an accompanist. “He’s a wonderful piano player,” says Monheit. “He has a great understanding of singers, and that makes him a very good accompanist.” When he was coming up, Benoit worked with singers Patti Austin, Connie Stevens, and Ann-Margaret. But he credits Lainie Kazan as his biggest influence in the fine art of vocal accompaniment. “I was twenty-one when I started with her,” he says. “She literally taught me how to accompany singers.”

Benoit’s work with singers is but one more intriguing aspect of his multi-talented musicianship. He was born in Bakersfield, California, and grew up in Los Angeles. Benoit was bitten by the jazz bug after watching a Charlie Brown special on television and listening to the music of Vince Guaraldi in 1965. “I was already a fan of the comic strip,” he says, “but when I heard that jazz piano trio, that was the defining moment when I decided that I wanted to play like Vince Guaraldi.”

At the age of thirteen, Benoit studied privately with pianist Marya Cressy Wright and continued his training with Abraham Fraser, who was the pianist for famed conductor Arturo Toscanini. He also studied music theory and composition, and later studied orchestration with Donald Nelligan at El Camino Junior College and film scoring from Donald Ray at UCLA. He studied conducting from Heiichiro Ohyama, assistant conductor of the L.A. Philharmonic, and furthered his musical education with Jan Robertson, head of the conducting department at UCLA, and UC Santa Barbara symphony orchestra music director Jeffrey Schindler.

After working with Lainie Kazan as her musical director/conductor in 1976, Benoit released albums on the AVI label from 1977 to 1984. He later released several chart-topping recordings for GRP, including Freedom at Midnight (1987), Waiting for Spring (1989) and Shadows (1991), which both topped Billboard’s Contemporary Jazz Charts at #5, #1, and #2, respectively. His other noteworthy recordings include Letter to Evan (1992), his tribute to another piano influence, Bill Evans, and Here’s to You, Charlie Brown: Fifty Great Years (2000). Benoit also recorded with Russ Freeman on their album The Benoit/Freeman Project (1994), and on their follow-up collaboration, 2 (2004), which was released on Peak Records. His other recordings for the label include American Landscape (1997) and Orchestral Stories (2005), which featured his first piano concerto, “The Centaur and the Sphinx,” and a symphonic work, “Kobe.”. In 2012, he released Conversation on Concord’s Heads Up International imprint.

Benoit received three GRAMMY® nominations in the categories of Best Contemporary Jazz Performance for “Every Step of the Way” (1989), Best Large Ensemble Performance for GRP All-Star Big Band (1996), and Best Instrumental Composition for “Dad’s Room,” the latter from the album Professional Dreamer (2000). In 2010, Benoit received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Smooth Jazz Awards, and he’s worked with an impressive potpourri of musicians including the Rippingtons, Emily Remler, Alphonse Mouzon, Dave Koz, Faith Hill, David Sanborn, CeCe Winans and Brian McKnight.

Benoit’s film scores include The Stars Fell on Henrietta (1995), produced by Clint Eastwood, and The Christmas Tree, produced by Sally Field, which was voted Best Score of 1996 by Film Score Monthly. He has served as conductor with a wide range of symphonies including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Asia America Symphony Orchestra and the London Symphony Orchestra. A long-time guest educator with the Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation, he received that organization’s Excellence in Music Award in 2001. His musical selections have been featured on The Weather Channel and his version of Vince Guaraldi’s “Cast Your Fate to the Wind” is included on compilation The Weather Channel Presents: Smooth Jazz 11 (2008). Benoit also currently hosts a morning radio show on KKJZ 88.1 FM in Long Beach, CA.