The Ko’olauloa Children’s Chorus is anticipating their upcoming tour to Italy this summer to share the Hawaiian spirit and culture.
The full choir has 80 singers, and 40 singers have been selected to go on tour. They will be traveling and touring with fireknife dancer Achilles Tafiti and award winning halau group, Halau Hula Olana, said Esther Macy, director and chorister of the choir.
Macy said for the upcoming tour, the choir will be visiting 11 cities in 10 days. They have been invited to perform at a mass in the St. Peter's Basilica, said Macy. There they will also be joined by the Appalachian Children’s Choir from West Virginia.
They also have been invited to sing at the new temple site in Rome, but the temple will not be completed at the time. Members of the Church have also invited the choir to sing in Palestrina, a city outside of Rome.
The songs have been carefully selected by Macy for this upcoming tour. “We have a repertoire of Polynesian numbers, Italian songs that are familiar to the people of Italy and have a message in them,” said Macy. “A positive message for making the world a better place to live in.”
The choir has gone on past tours to England, France, New York, and China and held concerts and choral festivals in Hawaii. It takes a long time to plan a tour such as this. Plans have been in motion for the past two to three years for this tour to Italy.
“The children have been rehearsing for quite a while,” said Macy. “This is not something we do on a whim.”
Macy has worked tirelessly for this choir and the upcoming tour. Morgan Cameron, a member of the choir who also lives with Macy, observed with a laugh, “She goes to sleep at 8 and then wakes up at 3. Normally when she wakes up she goes straight to the computer and works on emailing people. Italy is like 12 hours ahead, and she’s always talking to them and emailing them. She’s always putting everything together.”
Alli McDonell, another member of the choir from Laie, said, “I’m super excited as well. It’s such a huge, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that we get to go. We’re all very lucky in the choir.”
The children have been very focused preparing for this upcoming trip and have also been reading the Book of Mormon in preparation for it. “Right now she’s having us read the Book of Mormon so we can have the spirit with us more and we can be more prepared,” said Cameron.
“With the spiritual thoughts, it has to be from our reading and normally we try to relate it back to Italy and why we are going to Italy, and why we are going to see the sights, but we’re going to Italy to spread the gospel and to share our spirit and our love and our aloha.”
“I want them to be able to share the gospel with their action so that people can see the light, that they can be a light unto the world,” said Macy. “I want to send forth the spirit of God and Christianity and loving mankind. We are singing songs to bear the message of loving unity unto the world.”
The children will also be singing the Primary song, “Holding Hands Around the World” by Janice Kapp Perry, which they will be singing in English and Italian, which Macy did the arrangement for the choir and tour, said Macy.
The tour the children previously attended was to China. McDonell and Cameron, who got to go, said that it was a fantastic and great experience. McDonell shared, “The biggest thing about China is that we saw everything. We saw everything that is possible to see and I assume Italy is going to be just like that. If there is something there to see, if there is something to experience, Sister Macy is going to make sure we see it.”
Ephraim Uyehara, another member of the choir, added one last comment about the choir, saying, “It's kind of rare to find something like this, anywhere really. Its very spiritual and nice to have.”
Anyone who is ages 9 to 17 can join the choir as long as they can sing on pitch and work in a disciplined environment. Auditions are usually advertised by posters placed around BYUH campus and the community. The choir tries to make the tuition at an affordable price for anyone new to join, said Macy.