For Immediate Release, Feb 11, 2020
Aloha Friends,
There are times in life when we are pleasantly surprised by events quite unexpected: a beautiful blossom in early spring, a stunning sunrise across a cloudy morning, or the cheerful chirping of a little bird right outside one’s window. Every time one of these kinds of things happens, I feel like I have received a card of love from life written to me personally, and I cherish every one.
As spring comes around this year, I have some wonderful news to share with you, my extended ʻohana family at Aloha Music Camp. My wife, Joy, is pregnant with our second child and is due to give birth in the first 12 days of March! It’s going to be a home birth, as we had for our daughter ʻAutinitini who many of you already know from AMC 2019.
Even though I have already had eight months to try and get things in order, I still feel quite unprepared for this little surprise to come. And here I was thinking the whole time that I would be able to attend AMC and somehow magically get everything to wait just a few more days for me until I got home. Yeah, right!
So with sadness at not being with you folks this year, I will have to bow out of AMC 2020 in order to be home for my wife and little ones. It will be the first time I have missed Camp since we started almost 20 years ago.
I have a great friend here in Hilo, however, with whom I teach at the University of Hawaiʻi. He’s a fantastic guy, a fun and dynamic educator, and a professional musician with many years both teaching ʻukulele and performing for audiences near and far. His name is Lito Arkangel.
I have asked Lito to step in and cover for me at Camp this year, and I am certain you will all love him. You can find out more about Lito online at www.litoarkangel.com and also on YouTube.
I am so grateful that life has these wonderful kinds of surprises to share. I hope you will accept this last-minute change of instructors, and I am already looking forward to being at Camp in 2021 with ʻAutinitini and a new little boy to add to our AMC ʻohana. Aloha!
Kaliko Beamer-Trapp
