It’s time again for another trip off the island— later this morning I will travel to Los Angeles for my grandson’s first birthday already!
That means that I will miss attending the Karolers concert on Saturday, June 2 at the Lutheran Church of Honolulu, 2:00 pm. The Karolers’ Facebook page describes the event as an “Aloha” concert, meaning “goodbye.”
Don’t miss Karolers’ “aloha” concert on June 2nd. This will be our last concert – at least for a little while – as several members of the group will be leaving Hawai’i this summer. Come and enjoy an eclectic selection of beautiful music spanning hundreds of years and thousands of miles. We would love to see you in the audience!
So many of the singers I have worked with over the last few years are in this group! They include Karol Nowicki, Keane Ishii, Michal Nowicki, Naomi Castro, Sarah Lambert Connolly, and Scott Fikse. But I will see them in Europe as they join the Hawaii Masterworks Chorus on their tour of Vienna, Salzburg and Prague, beginning June 28.
Which brings me to the next concert I’m missing: the 15th Annual Hawaii Masterworks Festival at Chaminade University’s Mystical Rose Oratory on Sunday, June 3rd at 4:00 pm. This is actually a preview concert of the Hawaii Masterworks Chorus’ European tour, featuring Josef Haydn’s Nicolaimesse and music of Austria and America, with Tim Carney conducting. Yes, I’m supposed to be playing the Mass and instead, my friend Jieun Kim Newland will be playing continuo for this Sunday’s concert. I’ll be playing the Haydn mass and Mozart’s Ave verum corpus on tour.
Soloists in the Nicolaimesse include Chandra Peters (soprano), Sarah Lambert Connelly and Susan Purnell (mezzo-soprano), Douglas Hall and Karol Nowicki (tenor) and Scott Fikse and Keane Ishii (bass). I was at rehearsal a week ago—the soloists and chorus were sounding absolutely fabulous!
In addition to the Haydn and Mozart, the program also includes “Tantum ergo” (Franz Schubert), “Locus iste” (Anton Bruckner), “The Queen’s Prayer (Liliu’okalani), “Unclouded Day (J. K. Alwood, arr. Shawn Kirchner), “Ständchen, D.920” (Schubert), “Beautiful Dreamer” (Stephen Foster), “Waters Ripple and Flow” (Czech Folksong), “Dirait-on” (Morten Lauridsen), several spirituals and Hawaiian songs, and selections from Carousel (1945) by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein. Something for everyone and eclectic, to be sure!
You may remember that I took a break from my GoAhead tour of Eastern Europe last summer to visit the place where Haydn is buried in the Bergkirche, “Mission to Eisenstadt.” It was really quite miraculous that I got to the town all by myself, since it involved taking the subway, the train, and a taxi ride to get to the actual church. Mind you, my German vocabulary is limited to German chorale prelude titles, and when I got to Eisenstadt, I found that not many people spoke English.
Here are some pictures of the Bergkirche which I did not post previously.
It should be a fabulous place to make music!