Hilo Jazz Orchestra preps Zappanale trip with Palace Theater show
Hilo’s own rock-and-roll big band used the Palace Theater as a sendoff, packing more than 20 Zappa songs into a hometown test before a July trip to Germany.
The Hilo Jazz Orchestra turned the Palace Theater into more than a concert hall Saturday night. The Big Island ensemble used the downtown stage as a final rehearsal for its July run at Germany’s Zappanale festival, bringing a sprawling Frank Zappa program that mixed local musicians, rock theatrics and material the band had never played live before.
Leader Trever Veilleux has long described the group less as a standard jazz outfit than a rock-and-roll big band, and the Palace show made that clear. The set list stretched past 20 songs and reached across more than a decade of the orchestra’s Zappa tributes, including tunes the group had not touched in years. For a band that was the subject of the 2016 documentary Zappa U and already drew attention from the Zappa family during Dweezil Zappa and Ike Willis’ 2017 Hilo appearance, the night carried both hometown weight and international stakes.
The lineup underscored how deeply rooted the project was in Hawaii Island talent. Josh Timmons, coming off his role in Dear Evan Hansen, sang and played trumpet. Bassist and vocalist Isaac Nahuewai, also known as Ikaakamai, shared vocal duties with Hawaiian reggae artist Kaikena Scanlan. Saxophonists Payton Meyer and Heather Sexton filled out the horn section, Jimi Little handled keys, and 18-year-old Tom Yoes was on drums. Veilleux led the guitar work alongside Sean Luscombe and Jacob Markoff, giving the show a dense, multi-instrument feel that mirrored the ambition of the Zappa catalog itself.
That ambition is part of what made the Palace performance matter for Hilo’s live-arts scene. The concert started at 7 p.m., with doors opening at 6 p.m., and it functioned as a fundraiser as much as a showcase. In a town where large-scale, unexpected productions can still pull attention downtown, the orchestra’s decision to take on Zappa at the Palace signaled that Big Island audiences will show up for something demanding, unusual and unmistakably local. The July trip to Zappanale will take that proof of concept overseas, with Hilo’s musicians carrying a set built at home and tested under Palace lights.
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