Today Naomi Castro posted this photo of bass Keane Ishii on her FaceBook page with the news that he has accepted the position of choir director of Holy Nativity Episcopal Church. She wrote: Bittersweet times this rehearsal. Saying goodbye to my long-time LCH brother, Keane Ishii, who is going on to do great things as choral director at Holy Nativity. Love you Keane. We still have HOT and Evening Prayer and any other musical endeavors we can get our hands on. 

If you do a search of the number of posts in which I’ve tagged Keane Ishii, you’ll come up with a bunch! We first met Keane when he was a student at the University of Hawaii and recommended as a bass soloist for the LCH choir by Joe Pettit. I don’t know how many years ago this was, but it may even be a decade! Since then, Keane has been in countless musical productions with us, both with the Lutheran Church of Honolulu choir, the Bach Chamber Choir, and Early Music Hawaii, to name a few. My last conversation with him was actually in Kona when we were both sitting at the airport waiting for our flights back to Honolulu after two performances of Handel’s Messiah. My flight was delayed a couple of hours, and I wanted to let my husband Carl know, but my cell phone had died since I had been away from a power source since early morning. Luckily I spotted Keane in the waiting area, who I asked to call Carl on my behalf! I was so grateful to see Keane, who of course, had Carl’s number in his phone.

And you know what, I was the organist/choir director of Holy Nativity when I first moved to Hawaii, some forty years ago AND, the organ at Holy Nativity was the first pipe organ that former organ student Joey Fala heard and was inspired by as a preschooler!

Update: Joey has a new job too, as Organist/Choirmaster of the First United Presbyterian Church in Troy, NY. He says that he is having a blast, and says “This brings concentration/coordination to a whole new level!”

Holy Nativity, you are the birthplace of many great musical happenings and new beginnings!