Hawaii native Jeremy Wong debuts here in Beethoven’s Ninth

Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, including the “Ode to Joy,” returns for its traditional performances for the holiday season.

For baritone Jeremy Wong it’s a particularly joyous occasion, since it will be his debut in a major role here in his hometown. He’ll be the one introducing the famous choral section of the fourth movement, telling the audience after nearly 45 schizophrenic minutes of sometimes turbulent, sometimes beautiful music, “O friends, no more of these sounds! Let us sing more cheerful songs, more songs full of joy!”

“It’s really exciting and it’s a little bit daunting,” Wong said. “The Ninth is the culmination of Beethoven’s mastery of music, with him being able to hear all of this and compose all this while basically being deaf. It’s really incredible to just be a part of it.”

IT IS a fitting introduction for the native son come home. Wong, born in Ewa Beach, raised in Hawaii Kai and graduated from Kaiser High, got his start singing classical music with the Hawaii Youth Opera Chorus under Nola Nahulu and then studied voice at DePauw University in Indiana. At the suggestion of University of Hawaii voice professor Maya Hoover, he returned to UH to get his master’s degree.

“I thought I was going to get into choral conducting,” Wong said. “Then in the last semester my last year of senior year, when I was like, ‘I’m not sure what I’m going to do,’ she sat me down and said, ‘You’d be good for the master’s program here.’”

Though he’s now settled back here, teaching at UH and at various choral groups, his voice has already taken him far. He’s toured Germany on two separate occasions, both with choirs specializing in Bach.

“That kind of changed my life, to be cliche about it,” he said. “It really opened my eyes to how vast the musical world is and how much more I needed to learn. I think it’s really easy living here in this somewhat sheltered community to become stagnant. I needed that as a reminder to keep working and keep moving up.”

He also sang with a group led by Helmuth Rilling, one of the giants of choral conducting and a specialist in Bach. That led to another challenge: singing Bach in St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, Germany, where the composer is buried.

“Our choral risers were set up so that our third row was hovering right over his grave, so it was like, ‘Don’t mess up! Don’t mess up!’” Wong said with a laugh. “No pressure.”

FOR HIS performance in “Ode to Joy,” Wong will be joined by singers well known to local fans of vocal music: soprano Rachel Schutz, mezzo-soprano Charlene Chi, tenor Kip Wilborn and, of course, the Oahu Choral Society.

In preparing for singing the formidable Ninth, he’s having to work on his range. At age 26 his voice is still developing.

“I have to be a bit methodical in how I practice and try to set myself so that I’m not over-singing and not pushing,” he said. “I’ve had not too many of these kinds of opportunities. I think just experiencing the music and living through the music will help me out a lot.”

Also on the program is Richard Strauss’ masterpiece “Death and Transfiguration,” which is supposed to represent the thoughts of a dying artist, from the innocence of childhood to the struggles of manhood and eventually grace in death. Symphony Artistic Director JoAnn Falletta conducts.