Byron Yasui Unveils Ukulele Concerto ‘Campanella’ With Jake Shimabukuro

A funny thing of minor historic consequence happened back in June. An underrated instrument found new respect in the music community thanks to a brazen foray into the symphonic arena: a 25-minute ukulele concerto -- yes, a ukulele concerto called Campanella. Although the ukulele has seen other attempts at orchestral integration before, it is the ambition of composer Byron Yasui that is now turning heads. Commissioned for Byron Yasui by the Hawaii Symphony Orchestra earlier this year, Campanella is an especially complex concerto with all the hallmarks of a virtuoso-primed masterwork.  Sure enough, the virtuoso up to the task was found in Hawaiian native Jake Shimabukuro who, according to YourClassical (late in "Hour 2" of last week's episode of Performance Today), was "everyone's first choice" for the position. With the ukulele concerto Campanella poised for an untested balancing act between two strikingly different musical dynamics -- the ukulele and the Hawaii Symphony Orchestra -- it can't definitively be said whether Jake Shimabukuro's role was envied or feared.

To say nothing of the artist's skill, YourClassical heavily praised Jake Shimabukuro for having "extended the technique and expressive range of the ukulele" in his time with the instrument --- no doubt bolstering Byron Yasui's confidence in Jake's abilities to tackle anything he threw at him. The extent to which Jake was challenged can be heard in YourClassical's audio hosting of Movements 1 & 3 of Campanella, performed in Hawaii for its premiere in June, and now availabe to all, through Performance Today.

Upon early observation, one might notice a peculiar style of playing throughout the piece -- a style that is instantly explained by the title itself.  A soundbite of Yasui, in the podcast, has him explaining how "campanella" (which means "little ring" in Italian) implies that instead of hammering a run on the same string, each note should be played on separate strings in succession, allowing the decay, or "ring", of the previous notes to overlap.  Further described as a "blur", or similar to the effect of a piano's sustain pedal, the precise reason behind this choice of technique was not immediately clear, but it does have the noticeable effect of melding the ukulele's otherwise 'isolated' sound with the dynamic breadth of the Hawaii Symphony Orchestra.

In "Movement 1", Campanella can seem oddly meandering.  The instruments' conflicting timbres scurry to find common ground. Fortunately, the ukulele concerto has a tendency to wear well. In one instant, the pairing can come across as a humorous juxtaposition, and in the next, it drags you on a mind-bending excursion through a series of complex action sequences, mountain-scaling, and unexpected collisions.  Out of this tension however, the humorous undertones do seem to be addressed in the secondary theme: an irresistible brassy ragtime strut that paints the figure of a cartoonish ogre who shuffles, taunts, and lurches in the background while the ukulele bobs and weaves in hypnotizing syncopation.

Despite the all-too-expected skepticism for any work that teeters on the edge of "novel" and "ground-breaking," the ukulele concerto, Campanella, will do much to defeat any ill-held notions of the ukulele as a mere learning tool, child's toy, or object of distraction. If any budding composers in the stands are looking to open their horizons, they can heed Yasui and Shimabukuro's loud proclamation --- the ukulele is on the market!