Hawaii Symphony Orchestra back at Blaisdell Center Concert Hall after nearly three years
HONOLULU (KHON2) — Music inspired by Beethoven's symphonies is welcoming audiences back to the Blaisdell Center Concert Hall, Thursday night.
Broadway returns to Hawaii with new 2025 lineup
'1970 was our first time. We've been through quite a few conductors,' stated the Stams ohana.
The Hawaii Symphony Orchestra takes the stage for the first time in nearly three years. The concert hall completed the first phase in its $10 million renovation project.
'My idea was to perform all nine Beethoven symphonies in a very short period of time, first time it's ever been done in Hawaii, and to give it some local Asia Pacific flavor,' stated Dane Lam, Hawaii Symphony Orchestra Music Artistic Director. 'When it came time to return to the Blaisdell, there was nothing more iconic and nothing more appropriate than performing some of the most beloved and uplifting symphonies of all time.'
The symphony orchestra continues to grow its audience despite weathering through many changes.
Check out more news from around Hawaii
'Blaisdell can fit around over 2,000 and the Hawaii Theater is at around 1400. So, the stage sizes are very different. That affects the kind of repertoire that we can play,' said Michael Thomas Foumai, Hawaii Symphony Orchestra Composer in Residence. 'Here at the Blaisdell Concert Hall, we can put on much larger productions.'
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CBS News
an hour ago
- CBS News
Blue Man Group ending 30-year run in Boston
Blue Man Group, a staple of the theater scene in Boston, is ending its 30-year run in the city this summer. The final Boston performance by the bald, nonverbal trio will be July 6, according to a statement published on "It has been a privilege to be a part of Blue Man Group Boston, a camaraderie that has been celebrated by the Boston community since we first opened in 1995 at the Charles Playhouse," Blue Man Group general manager Jonathan Screnci said in a statement. No reason was given as to why the show is ending its run in Boston. Just last year, WBZ-TV reported that the Boston production of Blue Man group underwent a major refresh. Producers said the show would have new elements focusing on hot topics like artificial intelligence, as well as more interaction with the audience as part of the performance. In February, Blue Man Group ended its 33-year off-Broadway run in New York City. The show's director said the decision to close in New York was partly because of declining ticket sales. Blue Man Group also gave its final performance in Chicago in January. Blue Man Group will still have a residency in Las Vegas, as well as international locations. The show got its start in New York in 1991. More than 4.5 million people have seen Blue Man Group perform their unique multimedia shows in Boston. Tickets for the final shows are available at
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Two Lost Exploitation Films from Trash-Cult Favorite Andy Milligan Will ‘Re-Premiere' at Tribeca
'It's so funny to me that Andy Milligan has become this great cult figure,' Laura Shaine Cunningham told IndieWire. To Cunningham — an author and playwright who describes her stint in Z-grade movies as 'a totally aberrant episode in my life' — Milligan was a sadist with a reddish beard who did his best to ruin her good time while shooting a movie on a derelict farm outside Woodstock, New York, in 1965. 'He was prolific, but not talented,' she added, a common sentiment even among Milligan's most passionate defenders. And Andy Milligan does have a cult, a small but devoted subgroup fascinated by the contrast between the cracked auteurism of his films and the callous commercialism of their production. 'These are true independent movies, and if you really are inclusive and you really want to spotlight independent filmmaking voices, then Andy Milligan needs to be there,' said Jonathan Penner, programmer at Tribeca Festival, where two Milligan films will screen on Friday, June 13. More from IndieWire Zoe Saldaña Says Her 'Emilia Pérez' Oscar Is 'Trans': The Statue 'Goes by They/Them' The Beautiful, Brutal Action of 'Predator: Killer of Killers' Milligan's films 'will move you,' Penner added. '[They] may not move you in the most pleasant way, which is OK. Not all art is nice. Andy Milligan was not a nice guy, and he didn't make nice movies. But they are near and dear to my heart, because horror movies in general are about fear and suffering and mortality, and Andy made movies about the darkest shit in humanity.' A once-promising independent filmmaker and gay Off-Off-Broadway pioneer, Milligan sold his soul to 42nd Street in the mid-'60s. He did so by joining up with producer William Mishkin, who would provide Milligan with small sums of money to churn out one-take wonders — horror movies and sexploitation pictures, mostly — that ran continuously in grindhouses until the prints wore out. Then, they were thrown away. 'They were considered orphans that nobody cared about,' Jimmy McDonough, author of the Milligan biography 'The Ghastly One,' said. 'Mishkin in particular cared very little about his legacy,' McDonough added. 'He saw it as all very contemporary stuff that you worked to death at the time. Maybe a few more years passed [when] you could get it into a drive-in and fool people into thinking it was in color.' Then Mishkin's son, Lou, took over the business in the mid-'80s. So the story goes, after an interview with Fangoria, where Milligan complained about him, Lou destroyed the remaining films out of spite. 'Melted down for the silver content,' as Severin Films researcher Todd Wieneke put it. As a result, many of the films Milligan made for the Mishkins are now considered lost. But Wieneke kept looking, and after years of searching, he discovered two previously unseen Milligan films, 'The Degenerates' (1967) and 'Kiss Me! Kiss Me! Kiss Me!' (1968). Both were found in Europe, where it's common for unclaimed materials to be sent to national archives when a film company goes into receivership, a practice Wieneke credited to the 'deeply entrenched film cultures' in these countries. 'Kiss Me! Kiss Me! Kiss Me!' was originally shipped to the Netherlands as part of a package of Mishkin films. This particular title, a hysterical New York apartment melodrama in the style of Doris Wishman, was a poor fit for the all-night theaters in Amsterdam's red-light district. And so it 'sat on the shelf, unscreened, not a single blemish on it,' as Wieneke said, for decades. It was eventually sent to the Eye Filmmuseum and kept, unlabeled, in its archive until it was finally catalogued in 2023. McDonough said that 'Kiss Me! Kiss Me! Kiss Me!' is 'the most mainstream of [Milligan's] exploitation pictures, certainly, and perhaps all of his strange pictures.' McDonough credits this to the fact that Milligan didn't write the film — Josef Bush, best known for the cheeky 1968 gay guide 'The Homosexual Handbook', crafted the script from Mishkin's outline. 'Mishkin really felt like this was his 'Star Wars,'' McDonough laughed. The film was a hit on 42nd Street, possessing a certain tawdry entertainment value. It's also a valuable time capsule: 'Kiss Me! Kiss Me! Kiss Me!' contains some of the only known footage of the Caffe Cino, the bohemian West Village coffee shop that nurtured Sam Shepard, Al Pacino, and Andy Milligan. 'The Degenerates,' meanwhile, resurfaced at the Royal Belgian Film Archive. This print's origins are murkier — Wieneke believed it 'fell into private hands' between its initial theatrical run and its rediscovery at the archive. It comes subtitled in French and Flemish, and like 'Kiss Me! Kiss Me! Kiss Me!,' it was restored by Severin Films after being scanned at the archives. The restorations are clean, but not too clean: Citing 'defects that are native to the print,' Wieneke said, 'sometimes you can fix things, but it's not aesthetically correct to fix them.' 'The Degenerates' is technically science fiction, although it plays more like a feverish blend of 'The Beguiled' and 'Faster, Pussycat! Kill, Kill!' 'It's very much in character with Milligan,' McDonough said. 'There's ranting, there's raving, there's poisonous family dysfunction, and total destruction at the end.' Cunningham sounded amused recounting her scenes in the movie, about a band of six women 'surviving in the post-apocalypse' on a dirt farm in Woodstock. 'I do remember running through the rain with a pitchfork … the whole thing was absolutely ludicrous,' she said. 'Everyone said [Milligan's] films were ungettable. As if they didn't really exist,' Penner said. This is especially true of his sexploitation pictures: The eternal popularity of the genre has ensured that Milligan's horror movies — with colorful titles like 'The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here!' — have remained in circulation since the VHS era. But sexploitation is 'a pocket that's never going to be duplicated,' according to Wieneke. 'It's very much a product of its time and the carnivalesque characters who worked behind the scenes.' Penner will attempt to capture the atmosphere of old, gritty 42nd Street at 'That's TribecXploitation! The Andy Milligan Time Machine,' part of the festival's Escape from Tribeca sidebar. 'There's a secret history of the movies in New York, a really profound history on 42nd Street,' Penner said. 'These movies truly will take you back to a different time and place and filmgoing experience, which is very beautiful to me.' Both 'Kiss Me! Kiss Me! Kiss Me!' and 'The Degenerates' will 'world re-premiere' in the program, along with a selection of trailers and commercials meant to capture the look and feel of late-'60s New York. (The festival will also premiere a new documentary, 'The Degenerate: The Life and Films of Andy Milligan,' co-directed by Severin Films' Josh Johnson.) McDonough and Cunningham will make the pilgrimage, as well as Milligan players Natalie Rogers and Hope Stansbury. All will gather for a celebration of Milligan and the grindhouse film culture that made him — minus the street hustlers and discarded needles. 'The idea that we're showing his pictures at the Tribeca Film Festival … his ghost will be there cackling, madly, just laughing his ass off,'' Penner said. 'These movies sank below the bottom of the barrel, and we've fished them out.' For McDonough, who was close with Milligan in the years leading up to Milligan's death from AIDS complications in 1991, the homecoming is personal. 'I feel his presence on a regular basis,' he said. 'When I wrote ['The Ghastly One'], nobody wanted to hear about Andy Milligan … now Andy belongs to the world in a larger fashion. I'm just thrilled that he's finally being acknowledged as the idiosyncratic, unmatched talent that he was.' Asked if he thinks the ghost of Andy Milligan will be present at the screening, McDonough laughed: 'Wear your Kevlar vests is all I have to say. You never know how Andy might strike back — with a kiss, or something sharper.' 'That's TribecXploitation! The Andy Milligan Time Machine' will screen at the Village East by Angelika at 8 p.m. on Friday, June 13 as part of the Tribeca Festival. Best of IndieWire Guillermo del Toro's Favorite Movies: 56 Films the Director Wants You to See 'Song of the South': 14 Things to Know About Disney's Most Controversial Movie Nicolas Winding Refn's Favorite Films: 37 Movies the Director Wants You to See
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Jennifer Lopez Takes Center Stage in First Trailer for ‘Kiss of the Spider Woman'
Jennifer Lopez is taking center stage as a silver screen diva in the first teaser for Kiss of the Spider Woman. The film, written for the screen and directed by Bill Condon, is based on the acclaimed 1976 novel by Argentinian writer Manuel Puig and the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical of the same name by the multiple-Tony-winning playwright Terrence McNally and the composer and lyricist team of John Kander and Fred Ebb. More from The Hollywood Reporter 'Wicked: For Good' Trailer Teases Glinda and Elphaba's Fates as Dorothy Arrives Stephen Curry-Produced Basketball Doc 'Good Shot' Reveals Emotional Trailer (Exclusive) Margot Robbie and Colin Farrell Relive Their Past in 'A Big Bold Beautiful Journey' Trailer The story centers on political prisoner Valentín (Diego Luna) who shares a cell with Molina (Tonatiuh), a window dresser convicted of public indecency. 'The two form an unlikely bond as Molina recounts the plot of a Hollywood musical starring his favorite silver screen diva, Ingrid Luna (Lopez).' 'I couldn't live without movies. One of them I'll never forget,' Tonatiuh's Molina says in the teaser as he looks at a movie poster for Kiss of the Spider Woman. Throughout the teaser, Lopez can be seen performing in the title role of Aurora as she appears in dream sequences and a myriad of musical numbers as the two cellmates navigate an unexpected friendship. An Artists Equity and Mohari Media presentation, Kiss of the Spider Woman is a Josephson Entertainment / Tom Kirdahy / Greg Yolen / Nuyorican production. Condon, Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Mark Scheinberg, Dani Bernfeld, Kevin Halloran, Michael Joe, Mickey Liddell, Pete Shilaimon, Whitney Williams, Lopez, Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas, Courtney Baxter, Luna, D. Matt Geller, Pamela Thur, Sam Weisman, Daniel Weisman and Margaux Weisman executive produce. The film is produced by Barry Josephson, Tom Kirdahy and Greg Yolen. In his review, The Hollywood Reporter's chief film critic David Rooney calls it one of Lopez's best roles of her decades-long career. The movie debuted at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival in January with Lopez growing emotional over the response to the film. 'I've been waiting for this moment my whole life,' Lopez said. 'The truth is, when you talk about the importance of musicals, the reason that I even wanted to be in this business was because my mom would sit me in front of the TV when West Side Story would come on once a year, on Thanksgiving. I was just mesmerized. And I was like, 'That's what I want to do. That's what I want to do.' That was always my goal, and this is the first time that I actually got to do it.' The film is set to hit theaters on Oct. 10. Best of The Hollywood Reporter 13 of Tom Cruise's Most Jaw-Dropping Stunts Hollywood Stars Who Are One Award Away From an EGOT 'The Goonies' Cast, Then and Now
