The seats at Blaisdell Concert Hall and other concert venues are empty, but the four major classical music organizations in Honolulu are still working to bring their artistry and talent to classical music fans.
Hawaii Opera Theatre, the Hawai‘i Symphony Orchestra and Chamber Music Hawaii are creating fresh, locally performed content, while the Honolulu Chamber Music Series has gone overseas for content. You’ll have to go online to find all this, so keep visiting the websites of these organizations to keep abreast of latest developments.
For now, here’s what we know:
Hawaii Opera Theatre has canceled its Blaisdell productions and instead is instituting HOT Digital Aloha Fridays, consisting of six one-act operas, artistically filmed by local auteurs. The first production, “Bon Appetit!”, premiering Friday, is a whimsical piece set as an episode of “The French Chef.” Sarah Connelly, resident artist of HOT’s Orvis Studio, stars as the irrepressible Julia Child. Upcoming shows this year are “Chicken Skin Serenades,” a collection of scary arias presented with storytelling and dance, premiering on Oct. 16 for the Halloween season, and Gian Carlo Menotti’s “Amahl and the Night Visitors,” premiering for the holiday season.
Three more productions, Mozart’s “Bastien and Bastienne,” Poulenc’s “La Voix Humaine” and Laura Kaminsky’s “Hometown to the World” are planned for 2021. HOT is currently selling a $60 pass for all six productions, with pricing for individual shows $15-$25.
HOT is also posting a free opera-related content on its HOT Digital service, from General Director Andrew Morgan’s opera tips to videos of the late, great Willie K. belting out arias. Also online are “HOT Tub Talks,” starring local favorite bass baritone Jamie Offenbach, who is now HOT’s new artistic advisor, and Leslie Goldman of HOT Express, the organization’s education wing. They’ll banter about opera while sitting in — where else? — a hot tub.
The Hawai‘i Symphony Orchestra, for the time being, is performing chamber music on a $20 pay-per-view basis under its Sounds of Resilience programming. The next concert, titled “From Chaos to Calm,” will have a Hawaii flavor to it with the performance of a Bach concerto, with Scott Janusch on oboe and Claire Sakai Hazzard on violin. Janusch will play his lovely Kauila-wood oboe, made from centuries-old wood recovered on Kauai, and the accompanying ensemble will use the unique Challis harpsichord, commissioned in 1951 by University of Hawaii at Manoa professor Gertrude Roberts. It has a Jean Charlot mural on the lid and features an all-metal frame and soundboard to withstand Hawaii’s challenging climate. The concert streams at 7:30 p.m. Saturday and also features Dvorak, Shostakovich and American composer William Grant Still.
Several other chamber music performances are planned for the rest of the year, but HSO Executive Director Dave Moss hopes to resume its Masterworks season in 2021, which was loaded with impressive violinists. He’s trying to reschedule the great Joshua Bell, whose planned visit last weekend fell victim to the pandemic.
Chamber Music Hawaii’s plans for now consist of a “travel”-themed concert, scheduled to be streamed on its website and on YouTube at 7:30 p.m. on Oct. 24. CMH’s three ensembles — the Galliard String Quartet, the Spring Wind Quintet and the Honolulu Brass Quintet — will perform. A holiday show is also in the works. Donations are requested.
Honolulu Chamber Music Series is streaming concerts from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York. New concerts will be posted on the third Thursday of each month and will be available for five days. The streams are free.
