Honolulu’s only

Jazz club opens

            Unexpectedly, a club featuring some of Honolulu’s finest jazz musicians has opened at the edge of the Kapiolani bar district nearly next door to the 7-11 across the street from the Hawai‘i Convention Center on the edges of Waikiki.

                  Keahi Conjugacion

            Called Jazz Minds, it has been re-decorated with New York brick backing a generous stage with deep plump, red lounging chairs surrounding a small hardwood dance floor with a built in sound system and tiny dedicated sound control booth.  Very professional.                       

                                 Azure McCall  

            Soft opening night featured entertainment director Keahi Conjugacion, probably Hawai‘i’s best contemporary, locally born jazz singer, and one of the very musical Conjugacion family.  Her brothers Tony and Noland are best selling Hawaiian entertainers, and Keahi apprenticed musically at age 17 in pop and local music.

            Backing her up on opening night were Azure McCall and Rolando Sanchez, both popular local musicians.

           Rolando

            Azure is arguably Hawai‘i’s finest jazz stylist.  Her voice fills a room, cajoles and laughs through intricate rhythms at the drop of an improvised hat.  She could stand inspection in the finest New York clubs but won’t leave her adopted Hawai‘i home for long.

            Sanchez was born in Nicaragua, grew up in San Francisco and fell in love with Hawai‘i in 1984.  He has been one of the dominant Latin players in the Hawai‘i music scene for many years.

            The club is owned by slim, attractive Young Hae Yi, a Korean immigrant with many years food and beverage experience in Hawai‘i.  Her brief greeting gives an idea of how home grown this club is.

            “I am so happy to open this club.  This is my dream,” she said. 

            “I love America. I love Hawai‘i.  It gives me opportunity.  I love jazz music so much.  It is to me freedom, art, everything good.  I hope you like it too.”

            Conjugacion said the club would be bringing in top mainland talent and feature the best local bands.  Some groups lined up for November include the Dave Yamasaki Trio, Jazz Purr, Steve Jones Trio, and Miles Jackson Trio.

            Conjugacion moved to the Pacific Northwest 12 years ago.  Her inspiration was local diva Melveen Leed, who was giving voice lessons.

            She told me, “Sister, you are missing out.  Your voice sounds like jazz, you love jazz, you have to go away to the mainland to really learn it.”

            In Seattle, she did gigs like the Seattle Supersonics game, the Bumbershoot Festival, and nightclubs like Dimitriou's Jazz Alley, the New Orleans Creole Restaraunt, Wild Ginger, Salute, and Grazie's.

            In 2004, she came out with a CD titled "Jazz Hawaiian Style" which gave a jazz sound to hapa-haole and Hawaiian songs and featured her husband, pianist Dan Del Negro and Hawai`i's finest jazz musician, the former Stan Kenton alto saxophone master Gabe Baltazar. 

            When she came back home, she was instantly accepted into the local jazz scene and featured in the Hawai‘i International Jazz Festival.

            After her CD came out, she went to New York to play Carnegie Hall and hung out in Harlem.  The clubs loved her and she was given non-stop work until she pulled herself away earlier this year to come home.  Hawai‘i is trying to do the same thing.

            She played in places like St. Nichalos Pub, Lennox Lounge, Smoke, Cleopatra’s Needle and Kabehaz.

            Conjugacion and McCall go way back to a group called the Coconut Girls, who backed up one of her brother’s early CD’s.

            “We did the do wop thing.”

            McCall was born in Berkeley, spent her early years in Oakland, studied ballet, tap-dancing, organ – and eventually – singing. She was friends with Anita Pointer of the Pointer Sisters and they both sang in the Westlake Junior High School Choir. McCall went on to become a computer science major at U.C. Berkeley, and moved to Hawai‘i in 1972 with her husband.

            She’s played the Sahara in Vegas, the Royal Hawaiian, and the Mint.  She has credits with Rich Little, Danny Thomas, Santana, Herbie Man and Chuck Berry, among others.

            Sanchez is a singer, songwriter, percussionist on timbales, congas, bongos, and drums, a recording artist, and producer.  His band, Salsa Hawai‘i, won best Latin and best Latin vocalist at the Hawai‘i Music Awards.

            Conjugaction’s band is called Island Jazz, and features Keith Scott on piano, Ernie Provencher on bass and Chuck James on drums. 

            Scott is from Pennsylvania where 25 years ago he won the prestigious Downbeat Magazine scholarship to the Berklee College of Music.  He has been in Hawai‘i about three years.   See honolulujazzclub.com