Biography
Charles Michael Brotman, an instrumentalist and composer of wide renown now based in Hawaii, creates work that reaches from film and television scoring into classical repertoire and Hawaiian slack-key guitar traditions. Since the late 1980s his pieces have appeared in motion pictures, broadcast programs, and commercials, yet he remains best known for his serene nylon-string acoustic performances. Both through the Hawaiian trio Kohala and under his own name, he has issued multiple well-received albums on the Palm Records label he established. In 2005 the compilation Slack Key Guitar Volume 2, which he produced and performed on, earned him a Grammy Award. He placed a track in the successful 2011 feature The Descendants, collected several regional Hawaiian music honors, and pursues pop- and rock-oriented material via the side project the Barrel Thieves.
Born on Mercer Island in Washington to a musical household, Brotman started on violin before shifting his focus to guitar. After moving to Hawaii he completed a master’s degree in music at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa and subsequently taught classical guitar there. Captivated by the islands’ traditional slack-key approach, he began writing and playing in a hybrid style that blended Hawaiian elements with his classical and Baroque background. During a Los Angeles visit a publisher introduced him to music licensing; soon afterward his compositions secured placements in film, television, and advertising, prompting him to open his own production company and studio in Honolulu. He later settled on the Big Island, where in the late ’90s he launched the Palm Records imprint alongside his sister and business partner Jody Brotman. Throughout the following decade he balanced scoring assignments for numerous commercial projects with his own guitar releases and several trio albums recorded with Rupert Tripp, Jr. and Charlie Recaido under the Kohala name.
The 2005 Palm Records anthology Slack Key Guitar Volume 2 captured the first-ever Grammy for Best Hawaiian Music Album, a chart achievement that broadened Brotman’s visibility. He maintained his work with Kohala, issuing Deeper Blue in 2006 and Mana Road in 2014. His solo instrumental “Hapuna Sunset” appeared in the 2011 George Clooney film The Descendants. Brotman persists in composing, recording, and performing while serving the Hawaiian music community as director of Creative Lab Hawaii’s Music Immersive program and president of the Hawaii Songwriting Festival.
Born on Mercer Island in Washington to a musical household, Brotman started on violin before shifting his focus to guitar. After moving to Hawaii he completed a master’s degree in music at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa and subsequently taught classical guitar there. Captivated by the islands’ traditional slack-key approach, he began writing and playing in a hybrid style that blended Hawaiian elements with his classical and Baroque background. During a Los Angeles visit a publisher introduced him to music licensing; soon afterward his compositions secured placements in film, television, and advertising, prompting him to open his own production company and studio in Honolulu. He later settled on the Big Island, where in the late ’90s he launched the Palm Records imprint alongside his sister and business partner Jody Brotman. Throughout the following decade he balanced scoring assignments for numerous commercial projects with his own guitar releases and several trio albums recorded with Rupert Tripp, Jr. and Charlie Recaido under the Kohala name.
The 2005 Palm Records anthology Slack Key Guitar Volume 2 captured the first-ever Grammy for Best Hawaiian Music Album, a chart achievement that broadened Brotman’s visibility. He maintained his work with Kohala, issuing Deeper Blue in 2006 and Mana Road in 2014. His solo instrumental “Hapuna Sunset” appeared in the 2011 George Clooney film The Descendants. Brotman persists in composing, recording, and performing while serving the Hawaiian music community as director of Creative Lab Hawaii’s Music Immersive program and president of the Hawaii Songwriting Festival.
Albums
