Orchid Isle Orchestra, or OIO, will present a free all-strings concert at 4 p.m. on Sunday, May 21, at the East Hawaii Cultural Center in downtown Hilo.
OIO’s “Seaside Strings” concert spans from baroque to rock ’n’ roll, with players from Hilo to Kona.
Concertmaster Alden Young’s violin-playing is featured in “Oblivion” by Astor Piazzola, in Matthew Gelfer’s “Turtlewood Stomp” (in a duet with bassist Richy Chang) and in “The Old Boatman” by Florence Price.
Alden graduated from Boston Conservatory at Berklee with a degree in violin performance in 2019. He and guest pianist Kanako Okita will perform “Méditation” from “Thaïs” by Jules Massenet.
Antonio Vivaldi’s Concerto for Two Violins in A Minor showcases two Young Music Studio violinists, Yuma Kamuro and Joanna Coates. Yuma is a freshman at Waiakea High School. Joanna is in sixth-grade at her Kona home school.
Also programmed are the Marcia (March) from Carl Reinecke’s Serenade for Strings, (Op. 242) completed in 1898, and “String of Dolphins,” a work composed just last year by Yukiko Nishimura.
Alden’s piano Prelude by Chopin opens the concert. Then Young Music Studio teacher and OIO Artistic Director Cathy Young will lead ensemble music from the Suzuki repertoire.
“Maestro David MacKenzie has generously guest-conducted OIO so frequently, he is our ‘kama‘aina conductor’ — part of our family,” Young said in a press release. “We enjoy learning from and working with David. In line with all the water-related words in the titles of our music, we hope to create a joyful afternoon of seaside music.”
The public is invited. Admittance is free, but all donations (tax-deductible) are welcomed.