FRIDAY-SATURDAY
>> Orchestra will bring Disney music to life
No Disney animated film is complete without a great soundtrack, but no recorded soundtrack can quite match the experience of seeing and hearing music performed live.
The Hawai‘i Symphony Orchestra, which has given several popular film soundtrack concerts in recent years, will bring that to music and film lovers this weekend with “A Dream is a Wish,” a program featuring music from classics including “Frozen,” “The Little Mermaid,” “Lion King” and “Beauty and the Beast.” Clips from the films will be projected over the orchestra while it performs, with tunes sung by a quartet of professional singers with Broadway or touring credentials.
HAWAI’I SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA: DISNEY IN CONCERT
>> Where: Blaisdell Concert Hall
>> When: 7:30 p.m. Friday, 2 p.m. Saturday
>> Cost: $27-$79
>> Info: 800-745-3000, ticketmaster.com
Highlights will include “Under the Sea” (“The Little Mermaid”), “A Whole New World” (“Aladdin”), “Circle of Life” and “Can You Feel the Love Tonight?” (“The Lion King”), “Be Our Guest” (“Beauty and the Beast”) and, of course, “Let It Go” (“Frozen”).
Leading the orchestra will be Richard Kaufman, who among his many accomplishments has conducted for film and television scores. Singers Whitney Claire Kaufman, Lisa Livesay, Andrew Johnson and Aaron Phillips have performed in touring productions like “Mamma Mia!,” “Wicked,” “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” and “Pirates of Penzance.”
FRIDAY-THURSDAY
>> Surveillance is the theme at the Museum of Art’s weeklong event
The topic of surveillance will be explored in artistic and intellectual ways during “Classified,” a weeklong series of panel discussions, films and workshops at the Honolulu Museum of Art’s Doris Duke Theatre.
‘CLASSIFIED’: EXAMINING ART & SURVEILLANCE
>> Where: Honolulu Museum of Art
>> When: Friday-Thursday
>> Cost: Panels, $30-$35; films, $10-$12
>> Info: 532-6097, honolulumuseum.org
The event includes a video appearance by Edward Snowden, the former Hawaii resident and whistleblower who exposed U.S. government eavesdropping. He will be appearing as part of a panel discussion with civil rights attorney Ben Wizner, geographer and artist Trevor Paglen, and artificial intelligence scholar Kate Crawford, at 1 p.m. Saturday.
“Classified” programs also include a workshop on “Social Hacking,” which will explore the connection between technology and social relationships, at noon Sunday; and the workshop “Watching the Watchers,” led by Hasan Elahi, an artist who was mistakenly put on a terrorist watchlist, at 4 p.m. Tuesday.
Film screenings include “1984,” an adaption of George Orwell’s famous novel about a society under constant monitoring by Big Brother, at 7 p.m. Friday; “Citizenfour,” the 2014 documentary about Snowden, at 6 p.m. Saturday; “Risk,” a 2016 documentary about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, at 8 p.m. Saturday; “THX 1138,” George Lucas’ futuristic feature about a society where love is forbidden, at 7 p.m. Wednesday; and “Brazil,” Terry Gilliam’s fantastical 1985 feature about a low-level bureaucrat who gets caught up in his daydreams, at 7 p.m. Thursday.
SATURDAY-SUNDAY
>> Isle shows bid farewell to Korean star D-Lite
An era comes to an end this weekend as Korean singer/actor/television host D-Lite, who is also known professionally as Daesung, plays the final shows of his farewell tour Saturday and Sunday at the Hawaii Theatre.
D-LITE: FAREWELL TOUR
>> Where: Hawaii Theatre
>> When: 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday
>> Cost: $100
>> Info: 528-0506, hawaiitheatre.com
D-Lite is a member of the K-pop group Big Bang, which has sold more than 140 million records since it debuted in 2006. After more than a decade of superstar-level success in Korea and Japan, the members of Big Bang — G-Dragon, T.O.P., Taeyang and Seungri are the others — are taking two years off to do their mandatory service in the South Korean military.
The group came to worldwide attention when its 2011 EP “Tonight” won the Best Worldwide Act MTV Europe Music Award, beating out Britney Spears.
More recently, the group has become known for its 2015 tune “Bang, Bang, Bang,” which the South Korean government blasted over the Demilitarized Zone separating North and South Korea to engender jealousy and curiosity in the north.
SUNDAY
>> Concerto featuring lute, pipa will premiere in isles
The Hawai‘i Symphony Orchestra renews its tradition of debuting new, cross-cultural works on Sunday with the world premiere of “Eastern Light,” a concerto for Western flute and the lutelike Chinese pipa by noted Chinese composer Chen Yi.
HAWAI’I SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA: MW5 EASTERN LIGHT
>> Where: Blaisdell Concert Hall
>> When: 4 p.m. Sunday
>> Cost: $34-$92
>> Info: 800-745-3000, ticketmaster.com
The two-movement work was inspired by ancient rock paintings, believed to be up to 2,500 years old, in the Hua mountain region in southwestern China’s Guangxi province; and the traditional pole dances performed by the Li people, an ethnic minority group in southern Hainan province whose dances are similar to Filipino tinikling dances.
“It’s a great way to way to introduce a fine combination of styles, traditions, languages and thoughts within a piece of music,“ said Chen, the first woman ever to receive a degree from Beijing’s Central Conservatory of Music. The composer, now a professor of music at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, responded to questions by email.
Performing the work will be the highly decorated flutist Linda Chatterton, who has been a U.S. cultural ambassador, and pipa artist Goa Hong, from China, who has been winning awards and receiving grants to promote pipa for nearly 30 years. Both have extensive experience playing music by Chen, whose 2006 composition “Si Ji” (“Four Seasons”) was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in Music.
Symphony artistic director JoAnn Falletta conducts the orchestra, which also will perform Stravinsky’s “Song of the Nightingale” and Borodin’s “Polovtsian dances from Prince Igor.”