honoluluadvertiser.com

Sponsored by:

Comment, blog & share photos

Log in | Become a member
The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Friday, December 4, 2009

Raiatea is on a roll, both live and on disc


By Wayne Harada
Special to The Advertiser

Hawaii news photo - The Honolulu Advertiser
spacer spacer

'SWEETHEART' FOR A CAUSE

In addition to her CDand DVD releases, Raiatea Helm is the "Sweetheart" in Thursday's Aloha Medical Mission fundraiser "Four Doctors, A Patient & A Sweetheart!" The concert raises money for medical professionals who travel the Asia-Pacific region providing free medical help to the needy.

Their most recent mission has been to help victims of Typhoon Ketsana, which struck the Philippines, and to tsunami-ravaged Sämoa. In the past 25 years AMM has provided more than $86 million in free health care on 116 missions to 15 countries, treating nearly 250,000 people. All volunteers pay their own travel expenses.

To donate: Aloha Medical Mission, 810 North Vineyard Blvd., Honolulu, HI 96817. Call 847-3400 or visit www.alohamedicalmission.org for more information.

— TGIF staff

spacer spacer

'FOUR DOCTORS, A PATIENT & A SWEETHEART!'

A benefit piano concert for the Aloha Medical Mission

Featuring Drs. Jorge Camara, Aileen Denny, Timothy Lee and Elizabeth Ignacio; "Patient" Chris Cerna; and "Sweetheart" Raiatea Helm

7 p.m. Thursday

Blaisdell Concert Hall

$40, $60, $75, $100, $250

800-745-3000, www.www.ticketmaster.com

spacer spacer
Hawaii news photo - The Honolulu Advertiser

Helm's live-in-concert DVD was shot over the summer and marks her 25th birthday.

Advertiser library photo

spacer spacer

Raiatea Helm is the diva of distinction this holiday season, celebrating with a new live-in-concert DVD filmed this summer at the Hawaii Theatre, and a sweet mini-CD with five tracks, including two versions of her original composition tucked in a deluxe Hawaiian Host Macadamia Medley Christmas box.

She's also performing at 7 Thursday night at Blaisdell Concert Hall in the "Four Doctors, A Patient & A Sweetheart!"fundraiser.

"Raiatea Live!" (Raiatea Helm Records-Jazz Alley TV) marks Helm's 25th birthday and expresses her maturing nature.

She duets with guest artist Keola Beamer on a trio of his classics, perhaps reintroducing his "Mr. Sun Cho Lee," "Honolulu City Lights" and "Hilo Hana-kahi" to a younger, new audience.

She displays a sultry jazz persona with an Island spin on "On a Tropic Night," goes rock and rousing (a la Stevie Nicks) with "Dreams," sharing her "other" life as songbird with Fleetwood Mac's Mick Fleetwood's Island Rumours Band.

Wisely, she retains her Hawaiian foundation with sweetness and devotion, notably on a pair of hold-the-note-long-timers, "Alika" and "Kalamaula." There's a beloved old-fashioned "Ki-mo Henderson Hula," plus "Pua Maeole" with Andrea Torres and Peter Rockford-Espiritu doing a balletic take — she in aerial suspension, he on the floor — a measure of Helm's wide-swinging pendulum.

Then there's "Hawaiian Host Presents New Original Music From Raiatea" (Raiatea Helm Records-Hawaiian Host) on which she introduces two versions (acoustic and an Island remix) of her "Foolish Ways" original, a relationships number destined for a long shelf life for this twice-nominated Grammy contender.

This is Helm's — and Hawaiian Host's — second partnership: a confection suitable for gift-giving, here and abroad. Culture with chocolates works.

Tracks from three earlier CDs — "Kaulana O Kapuaiwa," "Kuu Lei Pua Kukui O Kamakou" and "Hälawa" complete the package.