In The Mood For Romance
Matt Catingub and his 40-piece orchestra prepare for an 11-day, six-venue music festival that he hopes to grow into an annual event that attracts an international crowd
By Chad Pata
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Catingub is giving a very modern look and sound to the
classic big band, and bringing back romance
behind you.’”
The finale of the festival comes that Sunday with the “Rhythm of Romance” where Catingub has brought in all the heavy hitters. There will be performances from Kenny Loggins, Michael McDonald, Natalie Cole and Ruben Studdard all once again backed by the MCO.
The festival and its theme have always been in Catingub’s DNA for he is not just someone who grew up in the era of jazz, but at its very heart.
His mother, Mavis Rivers, is known as Polynesia’s First Lady of Song. Born in Samoa, raised in New Zealand, she caught the ear of none other than Frank Sinatra, who signed her to his Reprise label.
Catingub spent his formative years hanging in music studios in Los Angeles and green rooms in Las Vegas. Ol’ Blue Eyes would hold Catingub as a baby while his mother recorded in Sinatra’s studio.
“Frank used to call my mom his ‘Swinging Lady,’” says Catingub. “She was not in the Rat Pack, but she was there during the Rat Pack era and on stage with a lot of the same people.”
By age 7, Catingub was playing the piano before later turning to the alto sax. In his teens he began writing music, literally “pen to paper,” and at 15 had his first brush with the fame his mother had always had.
The family had come to the Islands so his mother could play the Starlight Jazz ‘76 at the Waikiki Shell. Before her performance she dropped a bombshell on the young Catingub.
“She grabbed me and said ‘You’re conducting for me,’” says Catingub with a laugh.
“She stuck me in front of the band at the Waikiki Shell. Some of them guys with whom I still work, one of whom is in this orchestra. I knew her show better than anyone else ‘cause I was her kid, so that was my first show conducting.”
He returned to Hawaii many times but nothing really stuck for him until after his mother’s passing in 1992.
“We spread her ashes in Laie where a lot of her family still lives,” says Catingub.
“Almost from that day forward I kept being brought here. Jimmy Borges called me and asked me to come conduct. I just kept coming and they kept calling. It’s kind of chickenskin for me that literally from that moment on was when I started making some noise here.”
Since his installation as pops conductor for the symphony, he has tried to bring in new audiences for his shows, recreating the genre by fronting the orchestra with the likes of Elvis Costello and Toto. In the upcoming season they plan to do a tribute to the 40th anniversary of the Beatles’ iconic album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
The new venture with MCO is not a departure from the symphony, but an extension to help employ musicians and wow audiences between pops seasons.
“I want to bring the orchestra into its own category; I don’t know of anywhere it’s being done on the Mainland,” says Catingub, who still guest conducts for several symphonies in the contiguous 48.
“It’s usually done under the umbrella of a very large symphonic association, but we are doing this on our own, we are contemporizing the orchestra into a whole new thing for another generation.”
Also to help with this cross-pollination is collaborative work between local artists and the MCO. Currently they are working on a project with Gilliom with her as the headliner and the orchestra providing accompaniment.
“Fifty years ago this was how it was done,” says Catingub.
“If Sinatra or Ella Fitzgerald wanted to do a recording, they would do it with so-and-so’s orchestra. That has kind of faded away for various reasons, but I think it is a very interesting approach and some other artists are coming forward.”
As Catingub seeks to re-create the music sensibilities of that era, it is the performance that he admires most.
“Even when Frank would go into the Green Room and have his Jack Daniels, he’d still come out on the stage at the Sands and be singing with the Count Basie orchestra, and it was perfection,” says Catingub. “It was all about performance and musical perfection. A lot of that is lost these days, a lot of people can hide behind technology. We can’t with this one, we are coming out with a 40-piece orchestra doing high quality music. We better be prepared and we better be good.”
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