The Kona Choral Society will crescendo with a season finale of musical reverence with “A Serenade to Music,” a 25th anniversary celebration concert on May 17. ADVERTISING The Kona Choral Society will crescendo with a season finale of musical reverence
The Kona Choral Society will crescendo with a season finale of musical reverence with “A Serenade to Music,” a 25th anniversary celebration concert on May 17.
The theme of “Serenade to Music” aims to not only acknowledge in lyrical prose the power of music, but demonstrate the truest form of serenading – combining 90 vocalists with 38 instrumentalists for a powerful live performance, in honor of song. The concert begins at 4 p.m. at the Sheraton Kona Resort &Spa at Keauhou Bay.
The arrangements chosen by artistic director Susan McCreary Duprey will feature Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Serenade to Music,” and the final movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, “Ode to Joy,” in a two-part performance. The evening will begin with four separate songs that celebrate music through a common bond between music as a healing modality and its comparison to water as an equally therapeutic force.
Opening the show, Kona Choral Society members along with the Kona Youth Chorus, will join to sing two works: “Riversong: A Celtic Celebration,” by Roger Emerson and “How Can I Keep from Singing?” by Gwyneth Walker.
The third piece, the last of the three shorter, lighter, thoughtful songs, will conclude with “I am in Need of Music,” by David L. Brunner and will be sung exclusively by the adult chorus.
Rounding out the first part of the concert will be the Williams’ composition, “Serenade to Music.”
“This is a 14-minute piece with full orchestra and harp,” Duprey explained of the concerto written in 1938 as a tribute to composer Sir Henry Wood. “It is incredibly serene and lovely, and performed like a mini-opera.”
The composition, which Duprey described as musically horizontal with minimal musical dramatics, is harmonious and poetic in tone, and showcases four soloists: Amy Mills, a soprano from the Big Island; Maya Hoover, an alto from Oahu; Bernaldo Evangelista, a tenor from the Big Island; and Buz Tennent, a bass/baritone from Oahu.
Segueing between the signature adult performances will be the Youth Chorus, along with singers from Kealakehe Intermediate School’s music program, performing their own featured pieces.
When the second half of the program begins, there will be a shift in musical scale, a vertical masterpiece, filled with boisterous and blunt explosive energy – Beethoven’s famed Ninth Symphony. This masterwork is commonly referred to as “Ode to Joy,” because of the text of the final movement taken from Friedrich Schiller’s poem of the same name.
The Ninth Symphony will feature the entire orchestra, a compilation of instrumentalist similar to the Williams piece, but featuring the timpani of Sharon Cannon and four soloists: Mills, Hoover, Tennent, and Kaweo Kanoho, a tenor from Hilo. Beethoven’s final composition has never been performed in Kona, but several KCS members have performed it with Chorus Without Borders from Japan.
Tickets are available at Kona Stories Bookstore and Kona Bay Books. For more information, visit konachoralsociety.org or call 334-9880.
