First Mondays Chamber Concerts

Come and see how LCH supports all of the arts! We have a beautiful new mural on the Punahou Street façade. Thank you to Estria, our artist, who helped create the vision of this mural by guiding the congregation through meditation, creating the artwork, and helping us to paint it with his amazing finishing touches!

Our next First Mondays Concert is this week, on Monday, May 4 at 7:00 p.m. Pūpū & Conversation at 6:15 p.m. Our concerts are free and open to all, a $20 donation is suggested.Today we highlight Abe Lagrimas, Jr., ukulele extraordinaire!

Abe Lagrimas, Jr. is a musician, composer, educator, and author who plays the drums, vibraphone, and ukulele professionally. He studied at Berklee College of Music and competed in the worldwide and prestigious Thelonious Monk International Jazz Drums Competition in 2012. He has performed with Kamasi Washington, David Benoit, Eric Marienthal, Donald Harrison, Eddie Henderson, Big Daddy Kane, and Jake Shimabukuro among many other artists. As a solo ukulele artist, Abe is a multiple Nā Hōkū Hanohano Award recipient and won in 2022 for Ukulele Album of the Year. He has released multiple albums in the United States, Japan (Universal Music), South Korea (Sony Records), and his music has been featured on Hawaiian Airlines. Abe is also an active educator teaching private lessons and workshops, is an instructor for Fender Play, the Hawaii Youth Symphony, and is an integral part of Lōkahi: The Ukulele Collective, a non-profit whose mission is to help build ukulele programs in Hawaii's schools. He is the author of Jazz Ukulele: Comping, Soloing, Chord Melodies (Berklee Press & Hal Leonard), which is available online and in stores worldwide. He currently endorses Canopus Drums, Paiste Cymbals, Vic Firth Drumsticks, Beato Bags, Ohana Ukulele, Analysis Plus Cables, Fusion Gig Bags, and Roswell Pro Audio. After a 15-year-long stint in Los Angeles, CA, Abe has returned home and is currently based in Honolulu, HI. abelagrimasjr.com

Our next musician in the artist spotlight is Dr. Helen Liu, Violin! She will be performing in the upcoming First Mondays Concert this Monday, April 13, 7:00 p.m. Join us!
Pūpū & Conversation at 6:15 p.m. Our concerts are free and open to all, a $20 donation is suggested.

Dr. Liu is a core violinist with the Hawai‘i Symphony Orchestra (HSO) and regularly performs in various chamber music series on Oahu, Maui, and the Big Island. She holds degrees in violin performance from Stony Brook University (D.M.A.), New England Conservatory (M.M. and G.D. with a Concentration in Music-in-Education), and the University of Maryland – College Park (B.M.). Currently, she is on faculty for violin/viola and chamber music at Punahou School and serves as a string clinician at the Hawai‘i Youth Symphony’s Pacific Music Institute. Helen has been a member of the Galliard since 2016 and serves as the Education Coordinator for Chamber Music Hawai‘i’s (CMH) statewide Education and Community Engagement Program, scheduling in-school and community concerts and workshops since 2020. In addition to her classical music performances, she is a founding performer with The WAITIKI 7, a critically- and popularly-acclaimed modern exotica ensemble, with whom she has recorded the albums Adventures in Paradise and New Sounds of Exotica.