Michael-Thomas Foumai (left) at the Hawaiʻi Symphony Orchestra’s world premiere of Raise Hawaiki, March 28, 2019. Esther S. Yoo conducted the performance.
“Michael-Thomas Foumai is the brilliant young composer featured in [the Hawaiʻi Symphony Orchestra’s] Sheraton Starlight Series, showcasing a festival of Foumai’s music over the next few months with in-person, outdoor performances,” writes Zenaida Serrano Arvman in Thursday’s (5/19) University of Hawaiʻi News (Honolulu). “The series began May 14, and runs throughout the summer. In a first for a Hawaiʻi composer, Foumai will have a total of seven of his orchestral works and new arrangements of mele [songs] by Queen Liliʻuokalani performed by the symphony…. This speaks to the symphony’s extraordinary commitment to new symphonic music and the composers of Hawaiʻi, said Foumai…. The concert series features … Foumai works, all composed in the last decade. Much of the music has a story to tell, Foumai said, and is inspired by cinema, cartoons, poetry, literature, history and Hawaiʻi … ‘Almost all these works will be Hawaiʻi premieres,’ Foumai added. ‘Many of these works were written for and performed by orchestras across the country, so I’m grateful for the opportunity to have these works performed for the first time right here at home with our own Hawaiʻi Symphony.’ ”
