After I finished the recording of the music, I started sending the song out to various organizations, and one of the places I sent it was to an organization called Pillars of Peace Hawaii. I saw that the Dalai Lama would be visiting Hawaii in April (this was towards the end of February), and thought our song matched well with the Dalai Lama's message. I was pleasantly surprised when a woman named Mary Charles responded enthusiastically. It turns our Mary owns Hotel Lanai here on the island of Lana'i, and I had played at a fundraiser she held a few years ago, so she knew who I was. Mary offered the services of her husband, Tom Kiely, who is the Chief Executive Officer for Xterra TV. Tom was nice enough to send over a TV director, Chris Bednarek to do a professional music video for our song!
During the coordination of bringing Chris to Lanai, we found out that Jake Shimabukuro would be doing a concert at the school gym, as well as a presentation for the students at Lanai High and Elementary School. I got in touch with Jake's PR team, and when he came to the school, I was able to have a conversation with Jake and tell him about our song. He was extremely generous and down to earth, giving at least an hour of his time to come to our class and learn and play the song "Singing to the World" with our students. He even gave our class a private concert after we were done shooting our music video. To top it off, that night at his concert at the gym, he called the students and I up to perform our song live, and he even let me use his custom Kamaka ukulele! It was certainly an experience neither the students or I will ever forget! Here are some pictures from that day:
We had originally planned to do the video shoot at our beach cleanup field trip in March, but weather forced us to reschedule. The day Chris Bednarek came over, we were lucky, and had just enough good weather to get all of the shots he needed. I gave him prior footage I had taken of the kids, as well as the video from the day Jake Shimabukuro came to visit. Chris took all that back to O'ahu, and edited everything, and came out with an absolutely fantastic music video.
Soon after the production was complete, we found out from Mary Charles that our music video would be shown at both speaking events the Dalai Lama would be giving on April 14th and 15th at the Stan Sheriff Center in Honolulu, O'ahu! I am lucky enough to be attending with five high school students and another teacher. The 4th grade class will be able to view the event via live streaming in one of our classrooms at the school.
I will be posting more updates on this exciting project after the event takes place, so please stay tuned!
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