Sounds of Aloha's blog

Last year, the Sounds of Aloha offered "A Gift of Song" to our community in collaboration with our friends at the historic Kawaiaha'o Church. The free Christmas concert right across the street from the popular Honolulu City Lights was so well-received that SOA and Kawaiah’ao Church decided to bring it back again this year, on December 13. Once again we were blessed to share holiday music in this very special space with an audience that included many long-time friends but also lots of people who had never heard us before. In fact, some just followed their ears, or other people, into the church.

Yes, you read that right. It's not this. In another original comedy for SOA, our resident playwright (and bass singer) Scot Izuka, created a story where the chorus accidentally gets locked inside the mall after a Christmas performance. Travails, laughs, and music ensue involving elves, Santa, the chorus, quartets, and one tita security guard, played by our good friend, the hilarious Karen Kuioka Hironaga. This year we held an afternoon matinee as well as an evening performances on December 8, 2019, in Paliku Theatre on the campus of Windward Community College.

This is the week the Sounds of Aloha Chorus embarks for Modesto, California, to take part in the Far Western District Convention and Competition of the Barbershop Harmony Society, October 10-13, 2019. And what a special evening we had on our normal rehearsal night this past Thursday, October 3, when we performed our two-song competition package a couple of times for our families and some of our closest friends, fans, and supporters at the Ala Wai Golf Course Clubhouse ballroom! In barbershop we call this traditional pre-competition dress rehearsal "Friends & Family Night," and this was one to remember.

The Sounds of Aloha again proudly helped commemorate fallen U.S. military service members, at the 70th Annual Mayor's Memorial Day Ceremony on May 27, 2019 at the National Cemetery of the Pacific at Puowaina (Punchbowl Crater). Along with the Royal Hawaiian Band, the chorus has become a fixture at this moving event, musically speaking. In addition to Mayor Kirk Caldwell and other dignitaries, this year's honored guest was U.S. Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John M. Richardson, whose service record, it was noted, includes command of the submarine U.S.S. Honolulu.

One of the Sounds of Aloha's favorite events of the whole year is when we get to listen to, and sing for, other choirs at the Community Choral Festival held by our friends in the Honolulu Chorale. The 2019 festival on April 28 was no exception, and once again, the individual groups and the event as whole were better than ever! The diversity of music that every group selected to share in its own set was especially impressive.