In a night full of emotion and celebration, Hawaiian legends Keola Beamer and Henry Kapono bring good times, crisp vocals and legendary island music to Saratoga’s Montalvo Arts Center. The two Oahu natives sing love ballads, play classic slack key hits and have long been heavy hitters in the Hawaiian music scene. Beamer, now 70, is renowned as a master of traditional slack key guitar, and Kapono, now 72, rips just as hard. On Saturday, they perform da kine music, bringing aloha and mana to the sistahs and braddahs of the South Bay. Hana hou!

Keola Beamer & Henry Kapono
Sat, 7:30pm, $62
Montalvo Arts Center, Saratoga

Guitarist, singer and songwriter Graham Parker first came to the attention of American audiences during the punk and new wave era of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. As a result, he was sometimes mentioned in the same breath as acts like the Sex Pistols. But musically, he had little in common with punk bands.

Drawing inspiration from a wide variety of sources—including American soul and R&B—Parker had more in common with thoughtful, incisive artists like Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe. But he didn’t sound like them, either. Instead, Parker carved out a sound and sensibility all his own, audible on classic records like 1979’s Squeezing Out Sparks, and visible in his role as himself in the 2007 Judd Apatow film This is 40.

While he good-naturedly dismisses his early infatuation with soul music as “just another youthful phase that came and went like all the rest did,” it’s clear that many of those musical values stuck to him. It helped that he was exposed to some of those records before others his age in Britain.

Born in 1950, Parker grew up near Surrey, south of London, where his mother sometimes waitressed at the nearby army camp to earn a bit of extra money. Army officers transferred in and out. Often when they left, they would decide that taking their records along was too much trouble. Parker’s mom brought the orphaned LPs and singles home.

“The connection was almost immediate,” Parker recalls. “I’m 13 years old, and this soul music starts creeping into my awareness.”

Soon after, a cousin gave him a copy of the landmark LP Otis Blue / Otis Redding Sings Soul.

“I had this record and would sit and listen to it and cry, a 14-year-old kid absolutely moved to tears by this guy,” he says.

By age 15, Parker was frequenting dance clubs that opened in the afternoon. From there, his tastes broadened further when he saw Jamaican ska/reggae legends The Skatalites at a club.

“Then psychedelia raised its head,” he recalls with a chuckle. “So then, it was tripping out listening to Hendrix and Pink Floyd, things that were incomprehensible to me before I got into what you have to do to fully understand them.” Next, came an infatuation with British blues, attending concerts by the original Fleetwood Mac (featuring guitarist Peter Green) and Chicken Shack.

Still, his love for soul music never left him.

“I guess I was in my early 20s when I suddenly heard ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’ on the radio again,” Parker says.

By that time, he was already a budding songwriter. “I was trying to make something of it after a lot of traveling around doing the hippie thing in Morocco, working in Gibraltar and the Channel Islands,” he says. There, he found himself once again obsessed with the rhythmic structures and distinctive vocals of soul. “Something clung to my head that, ‘That is the way to go.’”

Parker describes mainstream rock of the ‘70s in England as being of a particular type. “If a band formed in Surrey, they were likely to have long hair, wear denim suits and play extremely plodding blues-based prog rock,” a style he laughingly describes as “the worst type of music ever.”

By the middle to late 1970s in England, punk—and a style of music retroactively dubbed “pub rock”—offered an alternative to all that. Parker’s original music folded soul, R&B and reggae into something that was at once rooted in established musical traditions, yet fresh and exciting.

Of the five albums he made with The Rumour between 1976-1980, four charted in the UK. Six out of seven consecutive Parker LPs hit the charts in the States. Scattered singles like “Temporary Beauty,” “Wake Up (Next to You)” and “Get Started, Start a Fire” have raised his profile, but it’s in concert—both with bands and as a solo artist—that he is best experienced.

Today, at age 70, Parker remains every bit the compelling songwriter, singer and performer. With nearly two dozen studio LPs (and as many live albums) to his credit, he’s still doing things his way, building on the foundation established decades ago in a little suburb south of London.

Graham Parker
Wed, 7:30pm, $44+
Montalvo Arts Center, Saratoga

Originally formed by Dan Kuramoto in 1974, Hiroshima has remained a singular figure in contemporary jazz for almost forty years. Taking inspiration from the musicality and pop sensibilities of groups like Earth, Wind and Fire, the band combines American jazz and R&B with traditional Japanese instrumentation like the koto and the shakuhachi (wood flute) to unique effect. The transportative 1980 hit “Winds of Change” received a Grammy nom for Best R&B Instrumental, and five years later the band went gold with the pop-fusion opus Another Place. This year, the band released 2020, their 19th album.

Hiroshima
Fri, 7:30pm, $75
Montalvo Arts, Saratoga

While musical styles and trends come and go, the musical creation of a group of friends never goes out of style. Formed back in 1974, Spyro Gyra has combined jazz, R&B, pop and funk for well over 40 years, earning them global standing, over 10 million albums sold and 5,000 shows played—and they’re not slowing down any time soon. With 29 studio albums, two live albums, and three compilations, the band has no shortage of hits to play for fans at the Carriage House. Bring proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test — and get ready to groove!

Spyro Gyra
Thu, 7:30pm, $63+
Montalvo Arts, Saratoga

There’s no better way to kick off the weekend than with a hearty laugh, and at the 45th annual SF Stand-Up Comedy Competition Semi-Finals this Thursday there will be plenty of opportunity to chortle, guffaw and chuckle. The event features five of the top performers from the group of comedians competing this year, each performing 8-12 minute sets and aiming for a shot at the grand prize. Previous competitors have included Dana Carvey, Robin Williams and Patton Oswalt—who’s to say who the Bay’s newest break-out comedian could be?

SF Stand-Up Comedy
Thu, 7:30pm, $38+
Montalvo Arts Center, Saratoga

In the months before the sudden outbreak of COVID-19, Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga launched a new thematic that would prove eerily prophetic: “SOCIAL: Rethining Loneliness Together.”

“In 2017, the US surgeon general called loneliness, ‘the most common pathology,’” says Montalvo Program Director Kelly Sicat. “So we wanted to take the arts center, and our 175 acre grounds, and use it as a platform to create moments of deep connection.”

The program began last September with The Mending Project, an art installation which encouraged people of all walks of life to bring in items of clothing in need of repair, and sit with a volunteer as they sutured the garment in real time.

“It was really more about sitting together, spending time listening to, and sharing stories,” Sicat says. “We invited the public to share each garment’s story, and find the ways that they connected them with other people. Through that, we kept a journal, and started capturing what people wanted to share, what people were looking for in connection, but also how people were using their time alone.”

After ‘The Mending Project,’ Montalvo hosted a similarly community-minded exhibit by Bay Area artist Kija Lucas: ‘The Museum of Sentimental Taxonomy,’ which attempted to document and categorize the objects in regular people’s lives which had acquired sentimental value.

“For Kija, it was another way of lowering the hierarchy that might be found in a museum or institution, and really give a different sort of value to things that people found sacred,” Sicat says.

The exhibit’s run at Montalvo was unfortunately cut short by the shelter-in-place order, but at www.themst.org patrons can still view the collection online, and even search the database by object. A search for the word “ticket” pulls up movie tickets from a 17 year old in El Cerrito, a Russian bus ticket from an anonymous contributor, and a ticket for an Elliott Smith show from an Oakland man, all of which were submitted for their own sentimental reasons.

“And then,” Sicat says, “we’ve come to this moment where we’re all having to take on a real experience of loneliness: what it means to self-isolate. How do you keep connection when you’re so far apart?”

In June, Montalvo offers an answer to this question in the form of their newest exhibit: a lone, a multimedia campaign utilizing bus shelters, billboards, and other public spaces scattered throughout the Bay Area. Originally launched in Seattle in 2018, a lone is the work of curatorial duo Vignette, who sought to combat the assault of advertising by taking back public spaces and turning them into art. When relaunched by Montalvo, a lone will again use public spaces, this time in an attempt to reconnect a Bay Area which has become an archipelago of isolated cities sheltering in place.

“I think this notion of social distancing doesn’t mean social-disconnecting,” says Montalvo’s Executive Director Angela McConnell, “and I think these will offer some sort of message of hope around that.”

In the meantime, Santa Clara County residents can still visit Villa Montalvo’s 175 acre grounds. As a public park, the grounds remains open during the shelter-in-place order–though visitors are still cautioned to practice social-distancing. There, patrons in need of art (or just a break from the glowing screens), can take in a number of permanent installations, like the Belevedere Temple, a Greek-inspired domed structure dating back to 1912, and Susan O’Malley’s ‘A Healing Walk,’ which directs visitors to reflect as they pass through Montalvo’s redwood grove.

“It’s really about mindfulness,” McConnell says. “That’s an important aspect of how people can get through a crisis: to really take care of themselves by being mindful, practicing breath work, and finding ways to experience joy and solace. I think that’s one of the things that Montalvo is offering: a place to find moments of calm during this unsettling time.”

Decades before anyone had ever heard of a podcast, the public radio program Selected Shorts brought listeners funny, absurd, sad and thought-provoking stories to their home and car radios. Performed before a live audience by notable stage and screen actors, Selected Shorts has been a fixture on NPR affiliates for more than 30 years. At this weekend’s live taping, David Strathairn, Jane Kaczmarek and others will take on the theme of “Unexpected Encounters,” reading tales of unlikely connection at the Carriage House Theatre at the Montalvo Arts Center.

Selected Shorts
Sat, 3pm & 7:30pm, $45+
Montalvo Arts Center, Saratoga

The Montalvo Arts Center invites the community to take in the majesty of the heavens at this annual gathering. Among the planned events: a night hike and primetime stargazing, plus a screening of family-friendly sci-fi film Earth to Echo, about four kids discovering an extraterrestrial. Simon Steel of the SETI Institute will talk exoplanets and ETs, and the San Jose Astronomical Association provides a collection of telescopes. The moon and Jupiter approach each other around 8:30pm, and tent-pitchers can catch a glimpse of Mercury before sunrise (visitors may head home at 10pm or reserve a spot to camp overnight).

Starry, Starry Night
Fri, 6:30pm, $20+
Montalvo Arts Center, Saratoga

Imagine your high school’s glee club and college improv troupe had a love child—conceived in the back of a van on the way to a show, of course. That just about sums up Broadway’s Next Hit Musical. Audience participation is key to this show, as the crowd is invited to throw out raw song suggestions and watch as the cast cooks up a Tony Award-worthy show tunes on the spot. To reach for another metaphor, it’s a lot like Broadway by way of Benihanas.

Broadway’s Next Hit Musical
Fri, 8pm, $59+
Montalvo Arts Center, Saratoga

Known by his last name—the Hawaiian word for righteous—Kapono has been a musical representative for his home state since the ’60s. He has taken home 14 Na Hoku Hanohano Awards—Hawaii’s Grammy—including Album of the Year and Lifetime Achievement. In the ’70s he played with the duo Cecilio & Kapono, the first Hawaiian group to achieve a national recording contract (with Columbia Records). Kapano launched a solo career in 1981 and has released 17 albums to date. But he’s still known for collaborations like the Wild Hawaiian in 2006, which combined driving rock and slam poetry with Hawaiian chant, and Rough Riders in 2015, which celebrated Hawaii’s cowboys (paniolo).

Henry Kapono
Sun, 7pm, $57+
Montalvo Arts Center, Saratoga