![\"Kate](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/RHB-Concert_16x9.jpg\")
Johnson is ready to step on the stage for a Royal Hawaiian Band concert at Hawai\u2018i Theatre. (Courtesy Kate Johnson)<\/p>\nKate Johnson\u2019s life has been shaped by two seemingly incongruous passions: music and cycling. She has been a clarinetist with the Royal Hawaiian Band for 25 years, first as a part-timer, then earning a full-time chair in 2024. Cycling also brings her pleasure and fulfillment. She has finished numerous races in Hawai\u2018i and on the continent, including Kona\u2019s Ironman World Championship in 2015, which includes a 112-mile biking leg.<\/p>\n
Johnson was born in Columbus, Ohio, and raised in Fullerton, Southern California, the youngest of five children. She started playing the clarinet in the fourth grade, developing what her band directors and clarinet instructors saw as exceptional musical talent over the years.<\/p>\n
Johnson is ready to step on the stage for a Royal Hawaiian Band concert at Hawai\u2018i Theatre. (Courtesy Kate Johnson)<\/p>\n
While attending California State University, Long Beach (Long Beach State), Johnson was active in the school\u2019s choir and orchestra. For many years, famed alumni Richard and Karen Carpenter\u2014the Grammy Award-winning 1970s duo, The Carpenters\u2014headlined the Winter Festival concerts on campus.<\/p>\n
\u201cKaren passed away in 1983, the year before I enrolled at Long Beach State, but for the four years I was there, I had the incredible opportunity of performing in the concerts with Richard, both as a clarinetist and a vocalist,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cHe augmented his band with student musicians and always featured the choir in his songs.\u201d<\/p>\n
During her junior year in the spring of 1987, Johnson sent an audition tape to Robert Marcellus, then professor of clarinet at Northwestern University, hoping he would accept her as a student. Impressed, Marcellus, who had been the principal clarinetist for the renowned Cleveland Orchestra for 20 years, responded with an unusual but enticing proposal: If Johnson could come to Door County, Wisconsin, where he spent summers, he would teach her. His wife, he said, could help her find a part-time job and a place to stay.<\/p>\n
Two months later, Johnson and her dad were in her Mazda pickup truck, driving to Door County. For nine weeks, she lived with a family that had two young girls and worked at a gourmet wine and cheese shop in Sister Bay, about eight miles away, to pay for her room and board and private weekly lessons with Marcellus. At the time, he was charging $100 per lesson, which lasted from one to three hours. That was a lot of money for a college student, but, for Johnson, a big bonus was meeting his friends\u2014prominent flutists, harpists and pianists\u2014who were regulars at the shop.<\/p>\n
\u201cMr. Marcellus was a taskmaster, but I learned so much about the\u00a0art\u200b of playing music from him,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cTo say he left a profound imprint on my life is an understatement. I remember him telling me, \u2018When you think you have given 100% into playing the music, you\u2019ve really given only about 60%.\u00a0You have more in reserve. Dig deeper.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s advice Johnson also found invaluable as an athlete. In 1985, she had been introduced to cycling by a college boyfriend who was training for the Race Across America. At the time, that grueling June bike competition went 3,000 miles from Huntington Beach, California, to Atlantic City, New Jersey.<\/p>\n
![\"Kate](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/RHB-11-17-2025-11-x-17ish-3_16x9.jpg\")
Portrait of the Royal Hawaiian Band, taken last year on the steps of \u2018Iolani Palace. Johnson is in the third row, second from left. (Ryan Wilson, City & County of Honolulu)<\/p>\n
\u201cHe bought me my first road bike, and I was hooked,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cWe primarily rode in the mountains of the Angeles National Forest, about 20 miles north of Los Angeles, with others who were training for the race, so the rides were strenuous, and I was expected to keep up with them.\u00a0I loved the freedom I felt on the bike\u2014moving forward under my own power, feeling the sun and wind on my face. Riding to the point of exhaustion was exhilarating! I wound up dumping the guy and keeping the bike.\u201d<\/p>\n
Johnson married in 1989, the year after she graduated from Long Beach State with a major in clarinet performance and a minor in choral vocal technique. In 1990, her husband, Loren, an Army intelligence officer, received a five-year duty assignment to Germany, where they were stationed in Grafenw\u00f6hr and Augsburg in Bavaria.<\/p>\n
There, Johnson bonded with the local and military communities through music. Among other things, she directed the bases\u2019 chapel choirs; was the principal clarinetist for the Weiden Symphony Orchestra; joined a j\u00fcgend blaskapelle, a band specializing in German folk music; and founded and conducted two 75-member choirs comprising German and American soldiers and civilians.<\/p>\n
Back in the U.S. in 1995, Johnson resumed cycling in earnest. She participated in triathlons from 1998 to 2016, ultimately deciding to step away from that to focus on coaching cyclists, which she had started to do in 2007 for Boca Hawai\u2018i. She continued coaching in person in Hawai\u2018i and online for clients on the continent until the end of last year.<\/p>\n
\u201cGiving up coaching was one of the hardest decisions I\u2019ve had to make,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cIt was a privilege to accompany athletes on their journey, some of them going from never ever having ridden a bike to, within three years, finishing\u00a0their first Ironman triathlon. Both jobs\u2014coaching and being in the Royal Hawaiian Band\u2014are time and energy intensive.\u00a0The band has become the higher calling for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
In her spare time, Johnson is researching the band\u2019s history and organizing its photos, records and news clips. Tuesday mornings, she volunteers at the Hawai\u2018i State Archives. Her current project is helping to digitize the vast record album collection that belonged to composer and bandleader Harry Owens, who\u2019s known for establishing the hapa haole style of Hawaiian music.<\/p>\n
For fitness and recreation, Johnson cycles about 60 miles per week around the Royal Hawaiian Band\u2019s busy performance schedule. \u201cFor me, going to retirement homes is especially rewarding,\u201d she said. \u201cWe might play Chinese or Japanese folk songs, and the k\u016bpuna\u2019s eyes light up as they sing the lyrics in their native language. Everywhere I\u2019ve lived, I\u2019ve seen how music brings people joy, touches their hearts and souls. Music bridges gaps. It connects us as human beings.\u00a0The band is such an important part of Hawai\u2018i\u2019s history.\u00a0How amazing is it that Ke Akua has allowed me to be a very small part of it?\u201d<\/p>\n
Strike Up the Band<\/p>\n
Founded by King Kamehameha III in 1836, the Royal Hawaiian Band is observing its 190th anniversary this year; it\u2019s currently the only full-time municipal band in the United States. Each year, it performs free of charge at 300-plus events for schools; parades; shopping malls; community centers; retirement homes; city, state and military functions and more.<\/p>\n
At 9 a.m. on May 1, the band will present a program of Hawai\u2018i-themed songs for the Lei Day celebration at Kapi\u2018olani Park. Most Fridays, you can enjoy their noon concert on the grounds of \u2018Iolani Palace. On Sundays, the band is usually at Kapi\u2018olani Park Bandstand at 1 p.m. Visit rhb-music.com for more information.<\/p>\n
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