Hawaiian chorale performs at schools

Press, 18 March 1987, Page 23

Hawaiian chorale performs at schools

Sixty-one members of the Punahou Chorale from Honolulu, Hawaii will travel to New Zealand this week on the chorale’s first international goodwill tour. Under the direction of Gary Heidel, the chorale has been invited to give performances at four schools in New Zealand as well as at the Sheraton hotel in Rotorua.

Punahou School, founded by Congregationalist missionaries in 1841, is the oldest college preparatory school west of the Rocky Mountains in the United States. It is a private, independent school with a roll of about 3700 students from kindergarten to high school. Punahou has a music

department which includes the chorale, the most accomplished of the four choral groups in the academy. To become a member of the chorale, a student must audition. Only a select number are chosen. Gary Heidel, director of the chorale, has taught music at Punahou since 1974 and in 1982 organised the chorale. He has conducted children’s and adult choirs in the United States, Germany and England. He believes that students should appreciate and be able to perform many styles of music. For this tour,_Mr Heidel has selected a wide repertoire of music to be sung by the chorale, including classical works by Mozart and Haydn as well as

Island favourites from Hawaii. In Christchurch the chorale will give an afternoon concert on Monday, March 23, at the Rangi Ruru Girls’ School.

That evening the chorale will join the Christchurch School of Instrumental Music’s orchestra in a public performance at the Great Hall in the Arts Centre. Burnside High School’s chorale will also join them. The Chorale will give a performance on Tuesday, March 24, at Rathkeale College in Mastertoh, a special performance at the Sheraton Rotorua on Thursday, March 26, and will conclude in Auckland at St Kentigern’s College on March 27.