Dayan Kai is a versatile musician, composer and improviser whose musical vocabulary draws from jazz, blues, roots, world music, and Hawaiian traditions. A lifelong musician with perfect pitch, Kai moves effortlessly between instruments, bringing an usual depth of musical knowledge and a distinctly improvisational sensibility to everything he plays. Born on the island of Maui, Dayan Kai’s family moved to California when he was a small child so he could attend public school (from Maui he would have been sent a special “school for the blind” on the island of Oahu).
Dayan spent most of his childhood in the San Juan Bautista area of Central California, with regular trips back to Hawaii to be with his grandmother Paulina, who got him started with piano and figured out he had perfect pitch. Over the next decades he would come to play with a significant range of individuals, bands and ensembles, tour world-wide, produce his own solo albums and recordings for others, and co-wrote, produced, arranged, and performed on “The Tractor Song” with Chris McDougall, which appears in the movie Animal Crackers. Upon his return to Maui in 2013, Dayan Kai performed music for “Ulalena” and served as the musical director and multi-instrumentalist for “Burnin’ Love,” an Elvis Presley tribute show and tourist attraction. Currently, he performs throughout Maui as a solo artist and collaborator, working with artists including John Cruz, Tempa & Naor, Wilmont Kahaialii and tours regularly as a solo artist and in collaboration with Keith Greeninger, and with several jazz ensembles in eastern Washington state.