Daniel Ho’s Many Roads to SFJAZZ
On May 2, the six-time Grammy winner brings Hawaiian roots, a wide-ranging musical mind, and a quartet shaped by decades of listening to the Joe Henderson Lab.
Daniel Ho performs at the piano, bringing the wide-ranging musical vision he’ll carry to SFJAZZ’s Joe Henderson Lab.
Listen to the full conversation with Daniel Ho below.
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.
The next major turning point happened across the street from his family home, at St. Louis High School, where band director Ray Wessinger pushed him to grow. Wessinger, who had worked in Los Angeles and at MGM, told him that a musician needed versatility: instruments, theory, arranging, composition, and the whole structure beneath the sound. Ho still considers that lesson foundational. “The more you learn, the more you realize you don’t know,” he said. That appetite led him to the Grove School of Music in Los Angeles, where Dick Grove’s harmony method became a permanent part of his thinking. Ho said he still uses it in everything he writes.
He now connects that early training to the broadest parts of his career. He spoke at length in the interview about “seeing a note through from beginning to end” — composing it, performing it, recording it, mixing it, mastering it, framing it visually, even starting with the wood of the instrument itself. That philosophy helps explain why his work can seem so wide-ranging without feeling scattered. He is not moving randomly from role to role. He is following the life of the music through every stage it passes through.
The newer music carries that same spirit into new terrain. Ho’s recent album, Timbre & Echoes, includes “Ríl Dé Máirt,” or “Tuesday Reel,” written for the Ukulele Tuesday community in Dublin. He met the group in Italy, admired the joy and togetherness they brought to their sessions, and composed the tune in that spirit. The story reveals a great deal about his musical instinct. Ho’s world kept expanding, but he still responds most strongly to music as a social act — people gathering, listening, and making a room feel alive.
That makes the Joe Henderson Lab a perfect setting for him. He said he loves intimate venues because they are “more relaxed,” with a direct line between the players and the audience. “We can make eye contact and communicate through music and conversation,” he said. That human scale matters in his work. Even with all his technical knowledge, he still values the immediate exchange above everything else.
He is also bringing a quartet he clearly believes in. Ho described Randy Drake, his longtime drummer and collaborator, as central to the music’s heartbeat. Saxophonist Bernadette Plazola brings both musical command and a strong personal connection with audiences. Bassist Alex Pierce rounds out the group. Ho described all three as musicians he learns from. “I’m always trying to surround myself with people who know more than I do and are better than I am,” he said. “That is my school.” It is a revealing line, both humble and exact. Even after all these years, he still speaks like a working student.
That may be the best reason to catch this show. Daniel Ho arrives at SFJAZZ with a long résumé, yet the conversation never felt retrospective. He is still studying rhythm, refining sound, and chasing the next level of clarity. JHL suits that kind of artist well.
Show Details
Artist: Daniel Ho (quartet with Randy Drake, Bernadette Plazola, Alex Pierce)
Venue: Joe Henderson Lab, SFJAZZ Center, 201 Franklin Street, San Francisco
Date: Saturday, May 2, 2026
Shows: 7:00 PM (sold out); 8:30 PM (tickets available)
Tickets: sfjazz.org
More on the artist: danielho.com
Listen to the full conversation with Daniel on the Backstage Bay Area podcast — streaming on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube — and if you can, catch the late show. A small room, four players who know each other, and a composer still chasing rhythm.
