The natural beauty of Hawaii has inspired many a Hawaiian mele. Now it’s inspired some classical music as well, in the form of the “Symphony of the Hawai‘i Forests,” which the Hawai‘i Symphony Orchestra will perform Feb. 15 at the Hawai‘i Convention Center.
The family-friendly work consists of six movements, accompanied by narration and animations, depicting stories relating to forests. “The composers, the animators and environmentalists got together to come up with new folk tales that involve forests,” said Michael-Thomas Foumai, the symphony’s composer in residence and one of six contributors to the symphony.
Foumai came up with a story about a girl who, after seeing kids starting forest fires, gets transformed into an ohia tree that later grows into a “mother tree that helps a forest grow.” “It’s kind of like life intertwined with nature,” he said.
A movement by Hawaii-born composer Tonia Ko, now of the U.K., tells of a character who wants “to escape the busy-ness of civilization” and learns a “long-lost secret of how one could connect with nature,” Foumai said.
Other contributors to the symphony are University of Hawaii at Manoa composition professor Takuma Itoh; Pulitzer Prize-nominated composer Leilehua Lanzilotti; Herb Mahelona, a Hawaii island composer known for youth opera; and Justin Park, now a student at the Berklee College of Music. The animators of each movement come from UH West Oahu’s Academy for Creative Media. Starr Kalahiki will narrate, and Dane Lam will conduct the orchestra.
“Each composer brought their unique voice in telling these stories,” said Foumai, who is known for grand, large-scale works. “There’s a great variety of music that involved in this, everything from something cinematic to something that’s almost even experimental.”
The concert is at 6 p.m. Tickets, which cost $10, are available at myhso.org.
