Leanna Jones looked carefully put together, with her hair smoothed and braided in complicated plaits that must have taken some time, and with heeled red shoes, all strappy and powerful and bold. Jones, when approached for an interview, said softly, “I’m going to perform a song called Autumn Leaves for Daniel,” while shifting from foot to foot and pulling anxiously on her beautiful red dress. She admitted, “Well, I know he’s won a few Grammys, so I’m a little bit nervous.”

The reason for the delicate air of anxiety that hovered over the excitement for the presentation is that Daniel Ho, who was in Las Vegas last week, is a world-renowned ʻukulele (and many other instrument) player, as well as being a masterful singer, musician, composer, and storyteller–among other things. 

A Honolulu native, Ho is a six-time Grammy Award winner and also has received six Taiwanese Golden Melody Awards and numerous Hawaiian Music Awards. He founded his independent record label, Daniel Ho Creations, in 1998, which has released over 100 acoustic and Hawaiian-themed albums and has collaborated with a wide range of artists, including classical guitarist Pepe Romero, Japanese rock guitarist Tak Matsumoto, and flamenco guitarist Gabriela Quintero. 

To round out Ho’s full-to-bursting biography, he is also an instrument designer and has created new instruments, such as the three-string ʻEkolu ʻukulele.

For more than an hour before the performance the dancers from Essence of Motion were practicing hula moves, complete with leis, leotards, and sarongs, while Bethany Brown cheerfully stapled Hawaiian-themed student artwork to the bulletin board outside of the vast, largely empty auditorium. 

Margaret Spahr, who owns Essence of Motion in Coudersport and also in Emporium, had three dancers with her, of the approximately 100 total dancers that she teaches. Her dancers had been preparing for this night for “about a month,” she said, but had never before tonight practiced with live musicians. 

Brown is the Austin School District art teacher and is also on the Board of the Potter County Creative Arts Council. About preparing for this concert, Brown said, “It’s been amazing…the whole process has been wonderful.” Brown became a board member of the Council just this past summer, of which she said she was “thrilled” to be asked. 

Brown had gone to a dinner with Ho and his wife, Lydia, hosted by Art Metzger the prior Thursday, and she said that Lydia had charmed the whole group by playing a few rounds of hide-and-seek with Brown’s sons before dinner. When it came time for dinner, Brown said, the boys were disappointed, but Lydia told them that she would resume the game after dinner. 

With a hearty laugh, Brown recounted, while tipping her head to the side in imitation, how the boys had hilariously side-eyed Lydia every time she took a bite of food or a spoonful of soup for the entire meal, because they were so excited for her to finish, so that they could continue playing. 

Lillian Vought, the granddaughter of the Northern Potter music teacher, Don Vought, was to open the show with “Over the Rainbow.” She said, “I didn’t know that I was even going to be playing here, until two days ago.” Lillian added that she’d been playing the ʻukulele for four years, and that she is originally from Colorado. 

When the show started, it was mentioned that Mr. Ho had gone to Galeton, Austin, Coudersport, Oswayo Valley, and Northern Potter in the past week to do mini-concerts and mini-workshops with the students.

Art Metzger said that the week with Ho was, “one of the most incredible art events that I’ve ever had in all of the years that I’ve done arts programming.”

Metzger went on to thank the Rigas family, Zito Media, Daniel Glassmire Law Office and the Potter County Music Boosters as far as getting the funds together for the Ho’s to come for the week. 

Paul Heimel, in a statement, said, “[Ho is] such a wonderful, knowledgeable, inspirational and gifted person. It’s incredible that PC3 could get someone of that caliber to come to Potter County for such an extended period of time, given the fact that he is performing all around the world and this just happened to fit in. He embraced the project because he believes so deeply in it. I have no doubt that he’s going to have a lasting positive influence on some of our young people.”

Ronan Grey, a guitar player and senior at Coudersport High School, played the ʻukulele at the beginning of the concert in a solo performance.

When Daniel Ho came on stage, he told the audience that his background was in classical music and jazz, but that the ʻukulele had inspired him and “ignited a passion in me for world music.” Ho recounted that he had done Mongolian albums and Chinese opera albums, Taiwanese Aboriginal, Mexican, and Spanish Classical, and even Irish ʻukulele music. 

In a later phone interview, Ho said that the Taiwanese Aboriginal music is where he “first felt and understood that the most direct connection of sound to emotion to me is indigenous musics from around the world…they don’t know about our skills and our chords and our techniques and the things we study in school, they just make sound with their voices and instruments…it’s pure emotion. It’s telling a story.”

Ho then enchanted the audience with a bluegrass Hawaiian song about Spam, the canned spiced ham and a staple on the islands, for which there was no Hawaiian word, he said, but his co-writer came up with the word, “Shuaʻa” based on the Hawaiian word for pig, “puaʻa.”

Outside the event, Lydia Miyashiro-Ho said, “I love just being sort of in the background and supporting [Daniel] as much as possible, and it allows him to concentrate on being an artist…” 

Lydia then, smiling, recounted how the two met, and that she was a “miserable” first-year law student. Then, Daniel got invited to Tasmania, which is in the Southernmost part of Australia, and thus invited her to go along with him. Lydia had been studying torts and contracts, and she said that she had had looked up and, “closed [her] book, and said, ‘Yeah, I would love to,’” and she “never looked back since, no regrets.” 

Lydia said that since then, the two have “done everything together.” She said she helps with “editing, interviews, album notes, little details,” and has “dabbled in songwriting,” and that collaborations with other musicians is one of the “most fun” things she gets to do. “And I just get to soak it all in like a fly on the wall…,” she said, sounding excited even now, as if her life is full of amazing past and future opportunities and adventures.

Later, in a phone interview, the Ho’s told this reporter of their family pets, a Tibetan Terrier named “Bubbie,” who was named after an ice cream shop (Lydia isn’t fond of the name). “It’s a pretty loose connection,” Daniel said, laughing, mentioning another dog, a Pomeranian, named “Chewy,” two tortoises, and two cats.

The Ho’s had recently attended the west coast premiere of a documentary about Daniel entitled “Life As An Audition” at the Valley Film Festival in Los Angeles. Prior to its screening was a short about the use of AI in music, and Daniel said that, “AI can compose the music, and it can sing like real singers, and score a film, and do rock, classical, pop music…it can do absolutely everything.” Ho mentioned that the computer program can do in three minutes what he does in two weeks, and he feels that song writing and composition is done as an art. 

When asked about how to get kids motivated to get into music, and how it fosters discipline and perseverance, Ho said that cell phones do the exact opposite for our attention spans. He said that now the average person’s attention span is nine seconds, and that, “the opposite of that is to take a passage of music and play it 50 times with a metronome, slow to fast, and focus and concentrate and develop a skill…to do something that is organic and natural.”

About Potter County, Ho said that its “natural beauty is a stark contrast from a city like Los Angeles,” and that at the cottage he was staying at, he was amazed that there was a little bridge over a stream that was five feet from the door. “I want to spend a month and a half here,” he said, “and just decide on a project and not be distracted by anything.” 

In conclusion, Ho said that he had just finished a three-week tour, “from city to city, getting on a plane, driving six hours…it’s kind of crazy. And then we get here and ‘Errrrrrr! [brakes screeching],’ and it’s definitely a place for creativity.”