Sounds of Aloha's blog

The first Sounds of Aloha dinner cabaret since before the pandemic reminded everyone why we all loved this event! Another full house of diners, listeners, and sing-along-ers gathered on Saturday, August 26, at St. Pius X Parish in Mānoa Valley for a super fun evening. The excellent spaghetti dinner prepared by SOA Musical Director and Head Chef Mark Conching and his musical sous chefs was followed by a performance of love songs by the chorus and quartets. In such an informal setting, a standing ovation means a lot!

This cabaret was another opportunity for us to share with our supporters, new and old, how grateful we are for their staying plugged in with us during our recent banishment to the web --and reemerging with us into the live world!

After two years of lock-down, on May 7, 2022 the Sounds of Aloha Chorus brought back its Annual Show! This year's production was an original musical melodrama, a western comedy called "Rhinestone Rides Again!" The audience was invited to dress in western garb themselves and, like in any good melodrama, cheer for the chivalrous hero Rhinestone and his horse Bruce, boo and hiss for the dastardly villain Black Bart, and sigh for the plucky heroine Sweet Sue. Joined by guest performers Miguel Cadoy, Stephanie Conching, Sophie LeFebvre, Peggy Wagner, and Plaid-itude, a women's barbershop quartet formed just for the occasion, the chorus guys and quartets H4, Funny Bones, and VHF spun a yarn full of great songs and laughs.

On December 11, 2022, the Sounds of Aloha were thrilled to return to performing live and in person after a long COVID hiatus that had limited us to virtual performances! We were honored to sing Christmas songs for a relatively small, distanced, and masked audience of true music lovers at the Lutheran Church of Honolulu. 

We are grateful to the church and its Director of Music and Liturgy, Scott Fikse, who runs a formidable music program there -- and also is an experienced and talented barbershopper! In fact, we couldn't resist calling him up to sub in as bass and sing a song with one of our quartets, 19th Avenue. You can watch the whole performance by clicking on any of the images below:

Back in 2016 and again in 2018, quartets from the Sounds of Aloha were featured in two episodes of Hawaii Public Radio’s show “Applause in a Small Room.” Named for HPR’s Atherton Studio, the weekly broadcast showcased live performances of musicians from Hawaii and elsewhere, recorded in front of small studio audiences. Our quartets had a chance to teach the audience and listeners about our singing style and perform as individual quartets and as a larger ensemble (in barbershop vernacular, a "very large quartet," or "VLQ").

There may have been fewer of them delivered overall, many were sung through masks and/or outdoors, and a few were delivered virtually, but the Sounds of Aloha found ways during this COVID pandemic to go ahead and provide our popular annual Singing Valentines to lovebirds! 

We were grateful this year to our friends at KHON television for helping spread the word with this Take2 story on Wake Up 2day.