Classical concerts abound this weekend

Classical concerts abound this weekend

The Orchestra of the Hawaiian Islands, led by Philip Simmons, pictured, makes its Oahu debut Saturday. (Courtesy Philip Simmons)

Classical music lovers in Honolulu will have two intriguing events to attend Saturday evening, and without breaking the speed limit, you can make both of them.

At 6 p.m. at Calvary by the Sea Church in Hawaii Kai, the Orchestra of the Hawaiian Islands, founded three years ago on Hawaii island by Chicago transplant Philip Simmons, makes its Oahu debut with a holiday pops concert.

At 7:30 p.m. at Studio 909 downtown, a free concert featuring music by Hawaii composers will be presented by Ebb & Flow Arts, a Maui-based organization that promotes new music.

Simmons, a classical guitarist and conductor, has led orchestras in several Eastern European nations and Russia, as well as the Midwest. In 1998 he established American Music Festivals, a presenting organization, initially bringing American music to Russia but eventually to other nations as well. Simmons moved to Hawaii five years ago and established the Orchestra of the Hawaiian Islands in response to the troubles of the now-defunct Honolulu Symphony, employing mostly symphony musicians.

The 12-member orchestra will perform holiday music with a distinctly Russian touch. The program includes the “Christmas Tree Waltz” by Vladimir Rebikov, a little-known 19th-century Russian composer most noted for his children’s songs. “It’s a nice arrangement for strings, very charming,” Simmons said.

Other works featured are “Hanukkah Melody,” by Ilya Levinson, a Russian-born composer now living in Chicago; and works by Rimsky-Korsakov, one of five mid-19th-century composers credited with developing a distinctly Russian style of music. Works by Leroy Anderson, an American composer championed by Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops, are also included.

Ebb & Flow Ensemble, founded in 1999 by composer and pianist Robert Pollock, often features music by local composers. This concert features “Overheated,” a new work that earned University of Hawaii at Manoa professor Thomas Osborne the Composer of the Year award from the Music Teachers National Association.

Osborne wrote the eerie, often intense piece for piano and violin after experiencing a scorching summer in Seoul in 2012. The piece is dedicated to Hawai’i Symphony Orchestra concertmaster Iggy Jang and UH piano professor Jonathan Korth, who will perform the work Saturday.

UH emeritus professor Neil McKay’s String Quartet — “one of his more celebrated works,” Pollock said — is also on the program, along with Donald Womack’s “Infinite Moment” and a string quartet by Takuma Itoh, a new UH faculty member whose music was described in The New York Times as “brashly youthful and fresh.”

Pollock will debut a new work, “Log A Rhythms, Vol. 6,” in which he explores harmonies based on chords with eight “factors” — the different intervals of a chord. Most Western music uses three- or four-factor chord harmonies. Pollock has explored complex harmonies for years and expects this work to be last of the series.

“For me each one had to be a bigger, more dramatic ending,” he said. “This time it’s almost like I have to end the whole six volumes. So it’s big.”