Daniel Ho

Daniel Ho has spent a lifetime widening the circle around a single instrument. He began with the ʻukulele in Honolulu, moved through classical guitar and piano, and built a contemporary jazz career with the band Kilauea. He then expanded into slack key guitar, world music, recording, mastering, instrument design, and video production.

By the time he reaches SFJAZZ’s Joe Henderson Lab on May 2, he brings more than a set list. He brings a way of hearing that treats music as craft, curiosity, and daily practice.

Ho traces the start of it all to second grade in Kaimukī, when he played the “Star-Spangled Banner” and the Hawaii Five-0 theme at a school assembly with a friend. In Hawaii, he said, kids carried their ʻukuleles to school and played together because the instrument was always close at hand. One recording in particular pulled him deeper: Ohta-San’s “Song for Anna.” “

It got me hooked,” Ho said. “I learned the first eight bars over and over when I was a kid, walked around the house playing the ukulele, and fell in love with it.”

That memory still matters because it points to the thread running through his work now: melody and feeling first, then the patient building out of everything around it.