Gabriel Ruiz Hiroshi Baltazar Jr. rose to national and international acclaim as the alto saxophone soloist for the Stan Kenton Orchestra from 1960 to 1963. A fertile period for the Kenton orchestra, the group recorded over a dozen albums and won two Grammy Awards for jazz. From 1964 to 1969, Baltazar worked and recorded with Dizzy Gillespie, James Moody, Oliver Nelson, and others. During this period he was also a regular in the Los Angeles recording studios, where as a fluid multi-instrumentalist he filmed with Pat Boone, Phyllis Diller, and Glen Campbell and many others. Baltazar returned to Hawai‘i in 1969 to work as assistant director for the City and County of Honolulu’s Royal Hawaiian Band, a post he held until 1985. From 1969 until 2009, however, Baltazar maintained an active agenda as a jazz artist, recording many albums as leader and sideman. Throughout this period, he returned often to the West Coast and occasionally to Europe. Born in Hilo, Hawai‘i, in 1929, Baltazar is the most influential figure in jazz in the history of Hawai‘i. Theo Garneau holds a PhD in English and master’s degrees in French and English from the University of Hawai’i, Manoa, where he teaches English. He has a bachelor’s degree in music from the State University of New York, Potsdam, and works professionally as a classical and jazz guitarist. He has published in various venues on jazz, translation, biography, and music in fiction.