Raiatea Helm

Two-time Grammy nominee, and multiple Nā Hōkū Hanohano award recipient, Raiatea’s Hawaiian music career spans 20 years. She has released multiple albums, recorded and performed with legendary musicians such as Keola Beamer, Aunty Genoa Keawe, Kealiʻi Reichel, Willie K and Mick Fleetwood, to name a few. Beginning at a young age, she has taken her love for Hawaiian music and performed throughout the U.S., China, Japan and Tahiti. Raiatea is now recognized as one of Hawaiʻi’s premier female vocalists, and a passionate keeper of the Hawaiian falsetto tradition. She has captivated audiences throughout the Hawaiian Islands and the world, masterfully interpreting traditional Hawaiian songs with classical elegance, poise, and grace. Raiatea has a degree in music from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and is the first Hawaiian Musical Artist Fellow of the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation. Raiatea currently serves as a Youth Development Outreach Specialist at the Liliʻuokalani Trust here in Honolulu, developing music programs for Native Hawaiian children.

Black Grace

Black Grace brings its distinct style of “exhilarating, seemingly inexhaustible energy” (The New York Times) to Hawaii, for the first time since 2010.

Founding Artistic Director, Neil Ieremia (ONZM), who “has spread his artistic roots in several rich pasts and grown up and out into a sunlight of his own making” (The New York Times), has curated a program of works, including an abridged version of his latest full length work Paradise Rumour, commissioned by the Sharjah Arts Foundation.

Bringing together a company featuring some of New Zealand’s finest performers, Ieremia will share his unique ability to pack the “raw visceral power of a primal communal rite into a carefully constructed form of rigor and sophistication” (The Boston Globe).