Do It: Kailua animal haven benefit, a peace concert, and more

SATURDAY

>> Tour, sale to benefit Kailua animal haven

Not too many events combine these activities: a tour of a wartime historic site, a monster garage sale and the chance to play with cats.

The Hawaii Animal Sanctuary in Kailua is offering all that at its benefit Saturday. The fundraiser includes tours through the Aikahi World War II tunnels, which were built to protect Naval Air Station Kaneohe Bay during World War II. Now known as MCBH, the station was attacked minutes before Pearl Harbor was hit on Dec. 7, 1941.

“They decided to build this gun emplacement in the mountainside that housed two 8-inch guns, which could shoot 20 miles out to sea,” said Gary Weller, a board member of Hawaii Animal Sanctuary. “The idea was to destroy those carriers before they could get even close to landing troops on the ground.”

The tunnels housed the equipment and the 22-man unit needed to operate the guns. For decades after the war, mushrooms were farmed in the tunnels. Weller has now leased the site for a data center.

Visitors will also want to check out the garage sale. Weller said it often features entire households’ worth of items, including brand-new kitchen appliances, furniture, toys and clothes “that still have the tags on them.”

And the cats? The sanctuary rescues stray, abandoned and abused cats and keeps them on the property. “We have people who just sit on a bench and pet cats,” Weller said.

>> Variety of performers joinfor ‘eclectic’ peace concert

Take a moment on Veterans Day to celebrate peace through music, poetry and dance.

“An, a Concert for Peace” features intriguing performers, including local activist and poet Frank Lee; choreographer Esther Izuo; musician Thom Fountain, who in addition to playing cello is an Emmy-nominated puppeteer; and author and poet Kathleen Norris, a Punahou graduate whose 1994 book “Dakota: A Spiritual Geography” reached The New York Times’ “Notable Book” list. The event is a fundraiser for Samaritan Counseling Center Hawai‘i’s Client Assistance Fund.

Lee’s poem “49 Died Today” has been adapted as a performance; it was written to memorialize the innocent lives lost on June 12, 2016, during the shooting at the Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla.

The program will be “very eclectic and centered thematically on peace and the context of war and peace,” said organizer and composer Chaz Hill. “We work for peace because we don’t have it.”

Formerly a theater and drama professor who studied and taught in South Korea for 20 years, Hill named the concert “An” — the Korean, Japanese and Chinese term for peace. Hill is now a flight attendant who sometimes composes music at the piano. He has written a song, “Numb,” responding to news of hatred and violence.

Hill received counseling from the Samaritan Counseling Center upon coming to Hawaii 21 years ago. He put the concert together to give back to the organization.

SATURDAY-SUNDAY

>> Handel gives soloist plenty to harp about

Hawai‘i Symphony Orchestra fans can celebrate one of their own this weekend when symphony harpist Connie Uejio performs Handel’s Harp Concerto in B-flat Major, Op. 4, No. 6.

Uejio brings an impressive pedigree to the stage, having developed an interest in harp as a toddler and later studying with Marcel Grandjany, founder of the harp department at Juilliard. She has been the principal orchestral harpist here for 35 years.

The Handel concerto was originally written for an 18th-century harp, a much simpler instrument than a modern harp because it had no pedals. The piece was later transcribed for organ, then rearranged for larger, more powerful modern harp by Grandjany.

The piece itself displays typical virtuosic flourishes and pleasant melodies, and plenty of chances for the soloist to show off.

“The neat thing about it is that the harp is playing all the time, and the orchestra is coming in and out of it,” Uejio said.

Playing the piece on the modern harp, which has about 2,000 moving parts, can be challenging because the performer has to constantly change the pedals to create accidentals (the black keys on a piano). “It does get overwhelming at times,” Uejio said. “You’re thinking about the fingerings, you’re thinking about the strings that you have to be pulling and you have to think about those seven things at the bottom.”

Maestro Joseph Swenson, whose grandmother is from the islands, returns to lead the orchestra in the first symphonies of Beethoven and Sibelius.

WEDNESDAY

>> The Blue Note to host Tony-nominated singer Loretta Ables Sayre

Loretta Ables Sayre, Hawaii’s own Tony Award-nominated entertainer, drops in to Blue Note Hawaii for an evening of song.

Ables Sayre portrayed Bloody Mary in the 2008 Broadway revival of “South Pacific,” winning praise in The New York Times for portraying the character not as a “horrible old Broadway caricature,” but “as a woman trapped — on a tiny island with no way out and no rescuers expected.” She reprised that role on tour through the United Kingdom, on a PBS broadcast and for local audiences at Diamond Head Theatre’s 2015 production, which she also directed.

Ables Sayre has a long resume on local stages as well, starting in 1979 singing for Keola and Kapono Beamer in what is now the Outrigger Reef Waikiki Beach Resort, opening for Andy Bumatai at the Royal Hawaiian’s Monarch Room and then singing at the Lewers Lounge and the Veranda at the Kahala Hotel and Resort. She’s been a favored choice to open for national acts like the Four Tops, James Brown, the Beach Boys and Kenny Loggins.