Album Notes

Dennis Graue was born in Hawaii and moved to southern California at an early age, where he immediately got into music. At a young age his perfect pitch led him to music lessons on practically every instrument in the orchestra. While his father worked at KTLA channel 5 television in Hollywood, he remembers taking French horn and Oboe/Bassoon lessons. They were the hardest, but he always kept up his piano lessons. He also played the trumpet, sax, and the drums in the marching band. In high school he already was playing gigs in the L.A./Pasadena area, and was working with his father Ken, doing on location sound for the News Department at Channel 5. After junior college and a trip to Guatemala for a year, where his grandparents owned a cottage on Lake Atitlan, he did a stint in the Army and was discharged back at home, in Hawaii, in the early 70’s.
Since that time he has become an essential component in the music scene, recording and playing with some of the best talent in Hawaii. He’s also toured Japan, Micronesia, Polynesia, Saipan, Guam, the mid-western and West coast states with Cecilio and Kapono and all over the U.S.A., with Don Ho. Dennis also recorded ”Life’s different Now” in Seattle while on the road, the 3rd album with Cecilio and Kapono. He is responsible for producing, writing and performing on 4 of Nohelani Cypriano’s C.D.’s which won 3 (local Grammies) ”Na Hoku Hanohano” awards for “Album of the Year” and twice “Female Vocalist of the Year”.
He has now ventured on, creating his own C.D.’s: one is entitled “Dennis Paull Graue,” a collage of pastoral and rhythmic tunes with Tahitian, Hawaiian, Latin and Afro-
Cuban textures. The other one is an Exotic ethereal soundtrack entitled “Galactic Kiss”, a collection of tunes that defies description. Dennis is working on his 3rd C.D. called "Quest." They are available through digital downloads from C.D.baby .com. He has a website, www.dennisgraue.com. He was Don Ho’s music director, conductor, and keyboard player, from 2000 to 2007, doing a lot of musical tracks, and sequences for Don. Dennis also has a book coming out next year called "My Life and the Don Ho Show", which details his experiences with television in its infancy, the renaissance of the Hawaiian music scene, and the wild and unpredictable ride that was the Don Ho Show.