Tag Archives: Hawaii Public Radio

Karen Tiller Three Decembers

Karen Tiller on HPR’s The Conversation

Karen Tiller, the director of Jake Heggie’s Three Decembers, stopped by Hawaii Public Radio on Monday morning for The Conversation with Beth-Ann Kozlovich and Chris Vandercook.

Karen shared what she loves about the piece, how it’s different from other operas she’s directed, and she gave behind-the-scenes insights into the rehearsal process. 

It’s true to life. That’s one of the things that makes this production so interesting to me as a director. It’s very conversational, it’s very modern, and it’s very in-the-moment. It’s very much like our own families – good things and bad things. There’s dysfunction in every family, there’s secrets in every family, and the process of sort of peeling back the layers of relationships as we go through these three decades is very interesting dramatically… The audience will become engaged from the very beginning, because it feels real.” – Karen Tiller

Check out the podcast of the show online here!
HorLogoPlain copy

 

More on Karen Tiller:

Ms. Tiller has directed several critically acclaimed HOT productions including:  Susannah, Jun Kaneko’s Madama Butterfly, The Pearl Fishers, and the 2013 production of Turandot.  Other notable productions in her career include Sweeney Todd at HOT, The Turn of the Screw at Opera Memphis and Orpheo et Euridice at OFNJ. Before directing, Ms. Tiller served as HOT’s Executive Director for almost ten years, leaving that role in 2013 to take on the challenging position of mother to Sophia, adding Eli in 2016. In addition to directing for HOT, Karen serves as Treasurer for the national board of the Joyful Heart Foundation and sits on the board of the Rehabilitation Hospital of the Pacific.  Ms. Tiller also serves as an Oahu Commissioner for the Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts.

 

Finding Love at the Opera

#HOTSpeaks: Finding Love at the Opera

The opera stage is filled with love, passion, and lust. But sometimes all of that romance finds its way into the seats of the concert hall, too.

Sarah Bauer, 30, and Nick Yee, 36, have been dating for more than three years, and Hawaii Opera Theatre’s HOT Tuesday was their official first date.

“It’s actually thanks to HOT Tuesday that I can remember the anniversary of what we now call our first date,” Sarah said.

Nick and Sarah met when Nick was hired as a DJ for an HOT Preview event being put on at The ARTS at Marks Garage, where Sarah was working at the time. Sarah was surprised to hear several songs she liked and didn’t know, and she asked Nick to send her some of the titles.

It was music that brought them together. But opera made it official.

Nick had an extra ticket to HOT’s 2014 production of Richard Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman on HOT Tuesday, a pau hana, pre-opera event for young professionals.

“Taking her to the opera seemed like a ‘serious move,’” Nick said. “I was looking at it like there was this sort of old world charm about it. I wanted her to know that I was serious.”

It did impress Sarah. She actually had already planned on going to the opera herself.

“There was something really magical about a date at the opera,” Sarah said. “It was such a classic sort of thing that you would see in the movies.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The two were interested in each other, but they were still a bit nervous. The fact that HOT Tuesday included a cocktail pre-party calmed their nerves.

“At HOT Tuesday, you’re able to talk to the person that you’re on the date with, have a couple drinks, relax, have something to eat, relax – you know?” Sarah said. “And you have this great conversation starter for yourselves afterwards.”

Nick appreciated that Sarah enjoyed the opera.

He was looking for someone cultured, he said, and he thought he just might have found that in her.

“I was so starstruck by her,” Nick said. “Every time she opened her mouth she said something really beautiful and well thought out and very musically enlightened.”

But Nick had one more question for Sarah. He introduced it after the opera production, when the two were at a nearby bar.

“‘Do you like jazz?’ It’s a simple question, but it’s a very loaded one,” Nick said. “Within jazz, like opera, there’s a lot of subtlety, there’s a lot of messages, and there’s a lot mixed into it. Basically, it’s asking someone, ‘Do you speak the same language I speak?’”

Sarah did. She spoke it so well, in fact, that she surprised him. On a date not long after, Sarah even played an album for Nick by one of his favorite jazz artists, but he hadn’t yet heard the album.

That was when he knew she was a keeper.

That ‘shared language’ is the glue that’s kept the couple together.

“What’s made it last so long? It’s shared interests, it’s teamwork, it’s mutual support of each other, and it’s communication, bolstered by a mutual love of the arts,” Nick said of their relationship.

Nick and Sarah now live together and also work together at Hawaii Public Radio.

When asked if they have plans for Valentines Day, the two said they’re letting each other off the hook this year because they have busy days at work.

It didn’t take long, however, for Nick to admit that he had plans after all. Nick will be starting a new position as the host of a music program on HPR that day, and he plans to play two hours worth of music that reminds him of Sarah.

Maybe even an aria from The Flying Dutchman will slip in.

Even though they won’t be going on a Valentines Day date, Nick and Sarah know they always have a date night in their future at the opera.

“We’ve kept the tradition of HOT Tuesday alive, and we love it. It’s one of our favorite nights out,” Sarah said.

 

The next HOT Tuesday will take place on  April 25 before the HOT production of Jacques Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann. Call the HOT Box Office to book your date night today.

(808) 596-7858.

#HOTSpeaks: Baritone Sings to Honor His Father

“If I sing, you are the music.
If I fly, you’re why I’m good.
If my hands can find some magic,
you’re the one who said they could.”

Leslie “Buz” Tennent sat in the Hawaii Opera Theatre rehearsal hall and read aloud the lyrics to “If I sing” from the musical Closer than Ever. The song inspired the name of the November, 2016 concert event with Hawaiʻi Public Radio.

The sold-out tribute concert commemorated the centennial of Buz’s late father and mentor, Arthur Tennent (1916 – 2004). Due to the concert’s popularity, Buz performed a reprise last week at the Mystic Rose Oratory as a benefit for the Hawai’i Vocal Arts Ensemble.

Arthur was an accomplished lieder and artsong singer, and a renowned choral conductor, voice teacher, actor, and author. “He generously shared with me his abundant gifts,” Buz said of his father. “I just thought it would be worthy to give back what he gave to me.”

At both concerts, Buz sang songs his father used to sing and that his father taught him, accompanied on the piano by HOT Education Assistant Eric Schank. Buz was also featured as a soloist at the HOT Opera Ball last year.

As a professor of voice at Chaminade and a private voice teacher, Buz’s life currently revolves around performing and teaching, but that might not have been the case if his father had never pegged him as a baritone and encouraged him to sing an aria in front of a crowd with his high school orchestra.

“He wanted me to sing,” Buz said. “And he was a tremendous teacher.”

Arthur humorously helped his son navigate the complexities of music theory, like the difference between “bel canto” and “can belt-oh,” while gracefully addressing more serious life issues, like coping with rejection.

“He taught me the idea of never giving up, to persevere and persist, and that it’s how we react to circumstances that matters – not that we get discouraged or knocked down, but that we stand up and just keep at it,” Buz said.

As a supportive father, Arthur went to all of Buz’s opera performances, he said, though he wasn’t particularly an opera lover, himself.

But while Buz was pursuing a Master’s in Voice at Manhattan School of Music in New York, Arthur joined Buz for a father-son debut concert at Carnegie Hall, where the two performed “The Pearl Fishers” duet from Bizet’s Les Pêcheurs de Perles.

dsc00803-2“We had a great time singing together,” Buz said. “We blended well together, and our voices were somewhat similar, albeit mine a little deeper.”

After leaving New York, Buz spent 12 years singing opera in Germany. But he returned to Hawaii in 2003 when he learned that his father was diagnosed with terminal cancer to care for his parents and place his father in hospice care.

That year, Buz decided to follow further in his father’s footsteps and start teaching. Until then, he had felt reluctant about pursuing voice teaching, even though his father called it a “noble art.”

“I think he was gratified that I did take up teaching, because I resisted it for a while,” Buz said.
In the last several months of Arthur’s life, he was able to see Buz take up his love of teaching.

“I think that meant a lot to him,” Buz said. “All of these things that I put into practice now as a teacher, I learned initially from him.”

The last time Arthur saw Buz sing live was at a Diamond Head Theatre production of the musical Ragtime in late 2003. He passed away in May of 2004, and Buz’s Mother died of cancer four years later.

“I don’t believe in closure. I just believe in acceptance,” Buz said. “There’s always that hole there, but you just learn to live with it. And you honor their memory.”

When he sings, Buz finds that acceptance. He continued to read the lyrics of “If I sing”:

“I never told you.
It took time ‘till I could see
that if I sing you are the music,
and you’ll always sing in me.”

Buz paused. Though his eyes began to well up, he smiled as he read the last lyric:

“Yes you’ll always live in me.”

 

Use the audio player  below to listen to a recording of the Buz and Arthur Tennent singing “O Mimi,  tu piu non torni,” Marcello and Rodolfo’s Act 4 duet from Puccini’s La Bohème.