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Composer Michael-Thomas Foumai’s works have been variously described as “vibrant and cinematic” by The New York Times and “full of color, drama and emotion” by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. That makes sense, since his original inspiration in becoming a composer was movie music. But these days, much of his motivation comes from the few words one finds on the cover of a book.
“I’m always searching the bookstores for titles,” said Foumai, a Roosevelt High grad who went on to study at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and the University of Michigan. “I’ll think, ‘That’s a great title, that could be a piece.’ That helps me focus on the story that I want to tell, and then I’ll find the music that will fit that.
“I have a long list of titles of potential pieces and I’ll go through them, and find one that’s really clicking with me.”
Classical music fans will see what has clicked with this young but already accomplished composer with the return of the Hawai‘i Symphony Orchestra’s in-person concerts, which started this weekend at the Tom Moffatt Waikiki Shell. Over the next four months, six of Foumai’s original works will be featured at the symphony’s Starlight Series performances. Another concert will feature his arrangements of Queen Lili‘uokalani’s songs.
“It’s really a rare kind of gift,” Foumai said. “It’s not something that living composers really get to enjoy, essentially having a whole season of their music.”
Symphony Executive Director Dave Moss, who took over the reins of the HSO in early 2020, knew of Foumai’s work even before coming to Hawaii. He has dubbed the series a “Foumai Festival.” “I’m so excited for the community and for the orchestra to get to know his music on this whole new level,” Moss said.
The concerts mark the first orchestra performances at the Shell since 2012. The old Honolulu Symphony Orchestra performed “crossover” concerts, blending the classical repertoire with pop and Hawaiian music, through the early 1990s, often attracting large audiences. With pandemic restrictions still in place, these Starlight Series concerts will be much smaller in scope, with audiences initially held to 200 per performance. That limit is expected to be raised as vaccination and infections rates improve.
Foumai, 33, has become one of the most acclaimed classical composers of his generation, winning awards from the prestigious Aspen Music Festival in 2012, the Music Teachers National Association and the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), as well as honors and commissions from more than a dozen prominent musical institutions and schools.
Earlier this year, his “Concerto Grosso” was recorded and performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra, which as one of the “Big Five” American orchestras is considered one of the best in the country. The work was praised as “an explosion of nonstop energy and excitement” in Philadelphia arts publication Broadstreet Review.
“It’s a huge deal,” Foumai said. “It’s like winning the Pulitzer Prize. It’s something that not every composer will get the opportunity to have, to work with one of these storied orchestras.”
Locally, Foumai has contributed arrangements of Christmas songs for the symphony’s online “Sounds of Resilience” holiday concert. He also composed “Raise Hawaiki,” a major work for orchestra and chorus celebrating Hokule‘a’s Malama Honua Worldwide Voyage, which premiered at Blaisdell Concert Hall in 2019.
Foumai started taking piano lessons at an early age, but it wasn’t until he started taking violin lessons at Kawananakoa Middle School that he started taking music seriously and began composing. “I knew that I enjoyed the music in movies quite a bit, but the idea of writing that music didn’t cross my mind until I started violin,” he said.
Initially, his compositions were inspired by movies and their attractive, exciting visuals. “I know I wrote a piece about the extinction of dinosaurs, and another about adventures out West,” he said. “I didn’t know what I was doing. I just put in notes and played it back, and put in more notes, whatever sounded good to my ear.”
He had developed enough basic computer skills to compose on a cheap software program that was best suited for piano music. A program called Sibelius that allowed for large-scale orchestral composition had been released, but it was extremely expensive, so Foumai found a demo version of it. He would use that basic version throughout high school, resulting in one of his most notable qualities as a composer — his prolific output.
“The problem was you couldn’t save,” he said with a laugh. “I could print scores out, but I had to keep the computer on as long as possible. Sometimes it would just shut down, like if there was a blackout, or it crashed and I had to restart. Sometimes I didn’t print the score and since it didn’t save, I had to recompose everything from memory.”
By ninth grade, he had finished several compositions for full orchestra, which he convinced his school music teacher to play in class. “I came to find out that the music I wrote was really hard to play,” he said. “But it was a really fun experience to hear the music, and I was only encouraged to do more.”
His work was first publicly performed when he was a sophomore, and in his senior year, the Hawaii Youth Symphony performed another. “It was a momentous occasion, because it was performed by the top (youth) orchestra in the islands,” he said. “The performance was amazing. I couldn’t believe it. It sounded like a professional orchestra, and that kind of sealed the deal that (composing) was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.”
Foumai went on to study composition at UH Manoa, and then got his doctorate at the University of Michigan in 2015 under the tutelage of the internationally acclaimed composer Bright Sheng. Sheng impressed upon Foumai the importance of developing “the most important part of the piece,” and passed on tips from his own teacher, the great Leonard Bernstein. “A lot of Bernstein’s teachings were funneled on to me, through Bright,” Foumai said.
He still draws inspiration from movies and sees his art as primarily telling stories through music. Most recently, those stories have been about his home, Hawaii, which he had avoided early in his career.
“I really didn’t want to have anything to do with home,” said Foumai, who is now a lecturer at UH West Oahu’s Academy of Creative Media. “I was searching elsewhere for information. I was looking to Asia, to the Americas, to Europe. I lot of my music was about ‘someplace else.’ ”
His time in Michigan, where people would constantly ask him about Hawaii, made him appreciate the islands and his multi-ethnic heritage. Advice from his mentor Bright Sheng helped.
“Our last lesson before he sent me out into the world was, ‘Michael, you should look at where you’re from,’” Foumai said. “Every piece I’ve written since then has been about a Hawaiian subject. It allows me to know about Hawaiian culture and spread that to people who don’t know that much.
“It’s given me a new mission about what my music can serve.”
Foumai festival
All concerts start at 7 p.m. and run approximately 90 minutes.
>> Where: Waikiki Shell
>> Cost: TBA
>> Info: myhso.org; downloadable programs will be available on concert day.
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On the program
Michael-Thomas Foumai describes his works to be performed during the Hawai‘i Symphony Orchestra Starlight Series.
Today
Foumai’s “Becoming Beethoven”
“I saw it as superhero story, an origin story,” which would tell Beethoven’s story of becoming deaf.
Also: Mozart and Beethoven; Rei Hotoda, conductor; Louis DeMartino, clarinet
May 21-23
Foumai’s “Raise Hawaiki Suite, Kealaikahiki, Suite for Orchestra”
“For something as important as Hokule‘a in being a symbol, I wanted to try to make everything — the rhythm, the melody — everything in some way be related to seafaring culture.”
Also: Schumann and Tchaikovsky; Rei Hotoda, conductor; Mira Hu, cello
June 4-6
Foumai’s “Fullmetal”
Inspired by the popular anime series “Fullmetal Alchemist,” which Foumai said he “really fell in love with.”
Also: Florence Price, Tchaikovsky, Lyons, Queen Lili‘uokalani; Lidiya Yankovskaya, conductor; Raiatea Helm, vocalist; Kanoe Miller, hula
June 11-13
Foumai’s “Music from the Castle of Heaven”
Inspired by the title of book about the music of Bach, Foumai thought of clouds and how they can appear to morph into different shapes. “It kind of gave me the idea of what if I had this cloud music that kind of changed into something that sounds familiar, and then disappear again.”
Also: Mendelssohn; Lidiya Yankovskaya, conductor; Erin Nishi, violin
July 2-4
Foumai’s “Overture on Themes From the Songbook of Her Majesty Queen Lili‘uokalani”
Also performing the queen’s music will be Moon Kauakahi, Eric Lee, Ho‘okena, Raiatea Helm, David Kauahikaua, Aaron Mahi, Robert Cazimero, Marlene Sai and Del Beazley; Sarah Hicks, conductor
July 9-11
Foumai’s “Rat Race!”
First started when Foumai was a student at UH, this piece was inspired by Tom & Jerry cartoons. “Rat Race!” kind of describes the “chaos in the piece. It’s really about a bunch of rats being pursued by cats.”
Also: Torke, Gounod, Dvorak, Makana, Copland, Bernstein; Sarah Hicks, conductor; Makana, slack-key guitar and vocals; Sophia Stark, soprano
Aug. 13-15
Foumai’s “The Telling Rooms”
Based on the winning entries in a high-school poetry contest held by a Maine organization called the Telling Room, the three-movement work is a meditation on colors and how they reflect our moods and personalities.
Also: Gershwin, Rachmaninoff; Naoto Otomo, conductor; Lisa Nakamichi, piano
Note: The symphony also will be giving a pops concert on Aug. 6-8, featuring the music of Led Zeppelin and Queen; Windborne Music
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