Punahou School

Violist Keon Sagara is a graduate of Punahou School and visits Classical Pacific while on Winter Break after his first semester at Eastman School of Music. Keon shares valuable advice with students looking to apply and audition to music schools and programs.

Ashley Ikeda plays the piano, sings, arranges music and plays percussion at Punahou School. The tenth grader tells us about the music that she is working on, her arranging, and teaching elementary students how to play music.

Punahou graduate and 2nd year Chemistry major at Caltech, Bao Nguyen shares some of his experiences as a pianist and violinist at the prestigious school.

Skye Aoki has been playing the violin since she was 3 years old. The Punahou 10th grader talks about her love of Beethoven and advises young students to study music they are interested in.

Violinist-Pianist Aya Okimoto is a Punahou 9th-grader who has won many piano competitions — 2019 Steinway Junior Piano Competition, The Hawaii Regional Round of The Osaka International Music Competition in 2021& 2022 and the Hawaii Music Teacher's Association Music Competition, to name just a few! Aya visits Classical Pacific during a busy week with a competition and a fundraiser for Maui.

Allisen Corpuz picked the right time and the right place for her first big win. She won the first U.S. Women's Open at Pebble Beach, shooting a final-round 69 for a three-shot victory. The 25-year-old from Hawaiʻi is the first American in 20 years to make the U.S. Women's Open her first LPGA win.

Punahou senior Iris Sim plays the flute, bass, piano, violin, guitar and more. Iris plans on continuing her studies at a conservatory next year, but in the meantime, always has new music to discover. She shares some of her favorites on Classical Pacific.

For Galentineʻs Day, Deanna Wen shared beautiful songs she wrote. Deanna sang them as she played the guitar, and her teacher, Duane Padilla played the cello. A February 14th to remember.

The latest COVID-19 variant has put a damper on yet another local festival. The scaled-down Punahou Carnival set for Feb. 4 will not be open to the general public. Punahou President Mike Latham spoke to The Conversation about how the school is weathering this latest surge.

Maui County shares how it's dealing with the latest surge of the omicron variant among residents and visitors; Punahou School's president talks about an increase in absenteeism due to COVID-19, and how it's impacting this year's carnival; and the palila, the Big Island native honeycreeper is the subject of today's Manu Minute