Thank you for bringing your hard earned cash into the state before Dubya starts another economic depression here.
We are in the midst of opera season which usually consists of 4 performances each of 3 or 4 operas. Opera does well and many performances sell out. The pit band is the Honolulu Symphony. The orchestra's heyday was in the 80's under Donald Johanos. The 90's saw a work dispute that devasted the orchestra and it's been trying to recover since. Funding has been poor in part to the sad state of the economy which went downhill due to the Gulf war & old boy politics. The state gives little or no funding which used to be used for neighbor island tours. Sony has been a big donor the past few years, and it shows in the programming which feature Sony artists. The Neil Blaisdell Concert Hall in which the orchestra performs in is a typical multipurpose hall that never sounds good in anything.
The orchestra back in the 70's and 80's had a lot of people who went on to major careers in the eastern 48 and else. Two former horn principals are now principals in Detroit & Houston. Our former principal timpanist is now at the MET. Gregory Fulkerson now at IU was concertmaster at one time. One oboist is now in SF and another was principal I think at the National until her death.
Up until the late 1960's the now 100 year old orchestra was a mix of amateurs, a few professional strings principals, and a mix of band directors(some of whom were Eastman & Northwestern trained) & military musicians. George Barati was conductor here till the mid 60's when former MET touring conductor/former NBC/MET/CSO cellist Robert La Marchina came on board and expanded the orchestra to professional level with some local strings as per service players. Donald Johanos came on board in the late 70's and led the orchestra to it's peak though he did have a lot of detractors due to the way he handled firings. Under Johanos, the orchestra did a swap tour of Utah, Idaho, & Wyoming with the Utah Symphony then under Abravanel. If the orchestra had more strings it probably would have been on par with any of the 2nd tier american bands of the period. The current music director is Sam Wong. Performances under Wong for the most part have been dull and often poorly prepared. A complaint heard from the musicians is that he doesn't know the music and how to rehearse. Performances under guest conductors have for the most part been superior to any thing he's done. His selection of personnel has not been too great either and instead of being a stepping stone to other jobs, I think Honolulu is now a dead end job. My old music lit professor Dale Hall has recently published a history of the orchestra.
The orchestra did two recordings for American Decca of Hawaiian music under Barati and 1 disc for Marco Polo(?) of Dan Welcher's music under Johanos.
There is a maui symphony made up of some Maui musicians and HSO people. This is a step up from the time I played back in the 80's when most were from Maui and a hand full of University of Hawaii students were brought in. Kauai has no activity I know of. The musical highlight of the Big Island of Hawaii is the Hawaii County band
There are a few chamber music series done by local & traveling musicians at the University, a local church, & the public radio station. Many excellent chamber groups & vocalists have performed here. Elly Ameling, Jesse Norman, the Tokyo String Quartet, the Canadian Brass and others have performed here at one time or another. Maui used to have a great summer chamber music festival which I think no longer exists. In the last 40+ years the only visiting orchestras have been the NY Phil (twice under L
and the Cleveland O (under Maazel in his last concerts as Music Director).
