JAKE SHIMABUKURO

Over the past two decades, Jake Shimabukuro has proved that there isn’t a style of music that he can’t play. While versatility for any musician is impressive, what’s remarkable about Shimabukuro’s transcendent skills is how he explores his seemingly limitless vocabulary – whether it’s jazz, rock, blues, bluegrass, folk or even classical – on perhaps the unlikeliest of instruments: the ‘ukulele. Responding to the urgent calls of his fervent imagination, the Hawai’i-born virtuoso has taken the ‘ukulele to points previously thought impossible, and in the process he’s reinvented the applications for this tiny, heretofore underappreciated four-string instrument, causing many to call him “the Jimi Hendrix of the ‘ukulele.”

Humbly, the good-natured musician, who first picked up the ‘ukulele at the age of four, says, “From the time I started playing, I was just doing what came naturally and what felt like fun. I love all types of music, so I never thought, ‘Oh, I can’t play that on the ‘ukulele.’” He laughs and adds, “If you don’t know the rules, you don’t need to follow them, and then nothing can hold you back.”