Yesterday I attended the spring benefit event, Kupu A‘e 2019, for the Hawaii Youth Opera Chorus at the Dole Cannery, which included a buffet lunch, silent auction and entertainment by the HYOC and guests.

The Hawaii Youth Opera Chorus is Hawaii’s oldest and most advanced community youth choir, offering a full spectrum of music education for students K-12. According to the program, HYOC serves approximately 1200 students from nearly 100 schools, either through weekly involvement or by participation in outreach and festival programs. Every year they produce 20-30 concerts per year.

Here’s what Wikipedia says about the group:

Originally the Honolulu Children’s Opera Chorus (HCOC), HYOC was founded in 1961 to provide children for the Hawaiʻi Opera Theatre (HOT)’s production of Giacomo Puccini‘s La Bohème. So many children appeared for the audition that it was soon realised that Hawaiʻi was in great need of a children’s chorus. Since then, HYOC has grown tremendously. It now contains singers from Kindergarten to 12th grade in eight ensembles. To this day, HYOC shares a strong connection with HOT, and the operas that require children use singers from HYOC. HYOC started out as a single ensemble, but as its attendance grew it continued to add additional choirs.

Fun fact: Did you know that I was once the accompanist of the Hawaii Children’s Opera Chorus?! That was decades ago, when there was only one ensemble, during the years 1974-1977!

Parishioners of the Lutheran Church of Honolulu have been heavily involved in HYOC for generations, including Naomi Castro, Karyn Castro, Marisa Castello, Seth Lilley, Joe Pearson, Nathalie Jones, and Hunter Nishimura among others.

In fact, Jean Lilley, wife of Pastor Jeff Lilley, is president of the HYOC Board of Directors, and Olivia Castro, longtime singer in the LCH Choir, is also on the board.

It was Jean who sent a bunch of us an email a few weeks ago:

Olivia Castro and I are current members of the Board of Directors for the Hawaii Youth Opera chorus.  We would like to invite you to be our guests at their next Spring Benefit Event: Kupu a’e.  The Castros and the Lilleys are each sponsoring a table for 10 for this event and we would love to fill the tables with our LCH family.  Our invitation will cover your place at the table and the meal.  The only thing we ask is that, should you accept our invitation, you either bid on a silent auction item, or make a cash donation to the organization.

Here are some of the photos I took of the performing groups:

 

And here is a photo of those of us at tables 5 and 6, the LCH Ohana (family) tables (photo taken by Pastor Jeff Lilley).

It was all for a great cause!