The Hawai‘i Symphony Orchestra enters a new era this summer with the arrival of maestro Dane Lam as music director and conductor.
It will be the first time since the orchestra emerged from bankruptcy 11 years ago that it will have a resident music director fully engaged in the local music scene. Onstage, Lam will be conducting most of its concerts, both the classical Halekulani Masterworks series and the pops HapaSymphony series; offstage, he plans to work with local music educators, composers and community music programs to raise the profile of the orchestra and orchestral music.
“I can’t wait to get there,” he said in a call from Brisbane, Australia, where he was packing up for the move here.
Lam will be on the podium at the Tom Moffatt Waikiki Shell on Aug. 5 for a preseason concert, titled “Dane’s Ultimate Season Mix-Tape,” before plunging into the regular season in October. The concert will feature soul singer Paula Fuga, Miss Hawaii Plus 2022 and reggae artist Trishnalei, and young local flutist Kenneth Hironaka.
Lam has conducted the symphony twice as a guest conductor and thought “there was a great chemistry.”
“I felt this was an orchestra I’d like to get to know better and I could see myself working with, but more than that, it was also the community of Hawaii,” he said. “I felt at home, totally beguiled by the warmth of the people. Being from the Pacific myself, and growing up not far from the beach, it felt very familiar. Also my heritage, being half Chinese, Singaporean-Chinese, walking down the street, I looked like everyone else.”
Lam, 38, studied piano as a youth and got interested in conducting thanks to a government program to cultivate Australian maestros. By his late teens, he’d conducted all of the Australian professional orchestras.
“Working with them was like working with a thoroughbred horse,” he said. “Anything that happened that was not good, you’d gently learn it was your fault. … It was very clear, when I duffed up, the orchestra duffed up. It was a fantastic way to learn.”
Lam studied at the prestigious Juilliard School in New York City and then embarked on the itinerant life of a young conductor, getting guest spots with orchestras throughout Europe and receiving a fellowship with an orchestra in Manchester, England. He was appointed the inaugural principal conductor of the Xi‘an (China) Symphony Orchestra in 2014, but after COVID-19 started shutting down performances there and around the world, he moved back to Australia. In 2020, Opera Queensland named him associate music director and resident conductor, which he is giving up to come to Hawaii, but he is continuing his association with the Xi‘an orchestra.
Lam expects it to take time to develop a sonic identity for the symphony, which has seen a parade of guest conductors coming to town as it emerged rebranded after the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra declared bankruptcy during its 2010-11 season. He sees his role with the Hawai‘i Symphony Orchestra as a guide taking people on a journey.
He intends to work collaboratively and with an open mind.
“I can come in with an idea of how it might go in a Tchaikovsky symphony, and then suddenly the principal clarinet or principal oboe delivers a turn of phrase or inflection that’s much better than anything I could imagine,” he said. “That’s the best way to get the very best from the players around you, to take what they offer and help it to fashion it into something that is coherent and speaks with one voice.”
His programming already reflects an appreciation for the rich musical variety of the islands and the Pacific region. Fuga, Jake Shimabukuro and Robert Cazimero are among the local musicians in the HapaSymphony series, while the Masterworks series will feature classical favorites by Beethoven, Shostakovich and Mahler alongside works from a new “Pacific Fanfare” series, featuring local composer Jon Magnussen, Chinese-born Huang Ruo and composers from Australia and New Zealand.
Local composer Michael-Thomas Foumai will also be highlighted as the season concludes with his “Raise Hawaiki,” which Lam called a “great modern oratorio, a chorale symphony about the voyage of the Hokule‘a and the resurgence of Polynesian wayfaring.”
The list of guest artists also gives a nod to the Pacific-based musicians such as Australian aboriginal didgeridoo virtuoso William Barton and pianist Mahani Teave. She was born in Hawaii and moved to Rapa Nui as a child, started piano there and had launched a promising career in Europe before returning to Rapa Nui to start a music school.
“There is something for everybody, and it does reflect our time and place,” Lam said.
For the summer, the symphony’s Starlight Series kicks off at the Shell on Saturday with a “Women in Rock” concert. Punahou School graduate Sarah Hicks returns to conduct the orchestra, as well as a classical performance on July 22, “Symphonic Dances,” featuring Hawaii Ballet Theatre. Saxophonist Mira Tsunoda, a Kalani High School student and a winner in the symphony’s Na Hoko ‘Opio (Young Stars) competition, will be guest soloist.
The Starlight Series concludes on Aug. 12 with the return of JoAnn Falletta, now the symphony’s conductor emeritus, in a program of opera favorites. Punahou student Celina Lim will be a guest cellist in Tchaikovsky’s “Variations on a Rococo Theme.”
Tickets to the Starlight Series are $15 to $75. Subscriptions and individual tickets ($18-$99) are available for the Masterworks and HapaSymphony concerts. For a full concert schedule, visit myhso.org.
