Will you come and do Beethoven’s Ninth with us?” Jim Moffitt of Chamber Music Hawaiʻi asked JoAnn Falletta. 

The Honolulu Symphony had already played its final regular concert before canceling the remainder of the 2009 season and filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. But the symphony wanted to perform once more.

“We have no money, though,” Moffitt clarified to Falletta, the acclaimed conductor who had served as the symphony’s artistic advisor. “It doesn’t matter,” Falletta said. “I’m going to pay for my own flight. I’ll come.”

Beethoven’s Ninth is one of classical music’s greatest declarations of collective hope: all people are brothers. For an orchestra facing extinction, the choice was an act of resilience.

“We wanted to thank our audience,” Falletta recalls of that 2009 performance, free to the public. “Everyone was crying. I was crying myself the whole time. No one believed the orchestra would come back.”

But just like in the film “Titanic,” the musicians continued playing as the ship sank.

What followed would become one of the most remarkable symphonic comebacks in the United States.

The Business Of Beethoven

From 1998 to 2008, Honolulu Symphony’s concert attendance plummeted by 70%, from roughly 216,000 to 65,000, compounding its financial troubles. The crisis exemplified a broader American problem.

In many countries, orchestras receive substantial government support. But the United States – the nation that produced George Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein and Marin Alsop – has no reliable system of recurring funding, leaving orchestras largely dependent on private nonprofit models.

The collapse of the 110-year-old Honolulu Symphony was hardly an anomaly.

Unlike Broadway musicals, which can charge upwards of $1,000 per ticket, symphonies uphold a different philosophy. Ticket sales cover only about 30% of an orchestra’s budget in the United States, with the rest raised through aggressive fundraising.

Maestro Dane Lam, who has conducted around the world, says, “No orchestra has ever paid for itself in the history of mankind.”

Private donations and philanthropy help keep symphonies alive, but government funding also provides a critical lifeline. Symphonies rarely charge beyond what the general public can afford. In the U.S., the very commitment to accessibility can slowly become the cause of death.

Sounds Of The Islands

Hawaiʻi’s musical identity spans centuries. The state has the oldest and only full-time municipal band in the country: the Royal Hawaiian Band, founded by Kamehameha III in 1836.

For two years following bankruptcy, Hawaiʻi was the only state without a symphony.

Falletta attributes its revival to a reciprocal bond between the musicians and their audience. These world-class musicians dedicated their lives to bringing music to the islands and kept playing even while owed months of backpay.

“No orchestra has ever paid for itself in the history of mankind.”

Maestro Dane Lam

Civic leaders, too, refused to let music die. Former First Lady Vicky Cayetano was among the first to lead the resurrection.

Cayetano grew up in a musical household, co-starring in a movie with Elvis Presley at age 6. Her sister, child prodigy pianist Virginia “Ginny” Tiu, was discovered by Ed Sullivan at age 5, helping the family emigrate from the Philippines.

For Cayetano, a symphony-less Hawaiʻi threatened music education. Its absence would be sorely felt by the keiki.

The Second Wind

The story goes that Cayetano bumped into ABC Stores CEO Paul Kosasa at Costco and recruited him to the Symphony Exploratory Committee, tasked with resurrecting the orchestra. The Kosasa Foundation donated up to $235,000 to recover the symphony’s assets from Chapter 7 liquidation. Valued at $780,000, the symphonic collection included a 2,700-work music library with scores by Queen Liliʻuokalani and other early 20th century Hawaiʻi composers.

In the hands of outside buyers, Hawaiʻi would have lost a historical piece of its musical culture.

But luck was on their side on St. Patrick’s Day in 2011. No one bid against them at the public auction, and the collection was saved, paving the way for the symphony’s rebirth, under its current name, the Hawaiʻi Symphony Orchestra.

Orchestra Of The Pacific

Fourteen years later, the symphony achieved another hard-won victory with House Bill 1860, designating HSO as the official state symphony. Hawaiʻi is now the second state, after North Carolina, with a state orchestra, opening the door to government funding.

“It’s impossible now for the symphony to end up where it was before,” Cayetano says with palpable gratitude. She stepped away from the HSO board last year after over a decade of service dating back to the Honolulu Symphony. Kosasa still serves as board president.

But the work is not done. 

Traditionally, orchestras draw older crowds, which may have contributed to declining attendance. Part of the problem may also be cultural.

Amy Iwano, executive director of HSO, challenged my characterization of symphony-goers as “upper echelon,” crediting HSO’s success partly to revised programming that represents Hawaiʻi today.

“Most people think of orchestras in the Western canon,” she says. “But there are fantastic composers in the Far East. Hawaiʻi is positioned between East and West. Our music reflects place.”

HSO incorporates instruments like the Chinese pipa and Korean geomungo, telling the stories of Hawaiʻi through music.

That includes “Raise Hawaiʻiki,” an immersive Hōkūleʻa tribute created with the Polynesian Voyaging Society. Local actor Moses Goods narrated the voyage alongside 84 singers and 64 musicians earlier this year. The “Films in Concert” series also attracts new audiences. “People may be intimidated by a regular concert, but everybody loves a good movie,” Iwano says.

HSO’s upcoming season starts Sept. 25, with the full schedule and tickets available on its website.

Music As Modern Medicine

Cayetano echoes Iwano’s sentiment that symphonies should not be viewed simply as entertainment reserved for a niche group.

Music’s effects on the human body and mind are far from fringe. A growing body of neuroscience research points to the same conclusion: Music can heal. 

With HB 1860’s passage, Cayetano envisions a future where government will utilize the orchestra for community healing. In Montreal, doctors can prescribe symphony concerts to patients. HSO already puts that idea into practice, deploying small chamber ensembles to perform in medical clinics across Oʻahu.  

For the first time in ten years, the orchestra will extend its reach to a neighbor island. On Sept. 19, HSO will perform a free concert, “Mele for Maui,” commemorating the third anniversary of the Lahaina wildfires.

The concert was made possible by donations from local institutions such as Hawaiian Airlines, Roberts Hawaiʻi and Hawaiʻi News Now. Efforts like these are still in dire need of government support.

The Missing Check

An earlier version of HB 1860 proposed a $500,000 appropriation to HSO. When the bill passed this year, the funding was removed, likely to improve its chances of passage.

While HSO is in its strongest artistic and financial position since its resurrection, the symphony still carries debt and lacks steady funding to serve all of Hawaiʻi.

Waiākea High School senior Keira Ida Ayu is raising $96,000 to bring HSO to the Big Island next year, highlighting that not every student can fly to Oʻahu for a concert.

The funding gap runs just as deep inside the orchestra.

Lam describes orchestra musicians as “athletes of the music world,” having trained at elite institutions such as Juilliard. Yet they earn working-class pay for world-class skill. In Hawaiʻi especially, compensation has never reflected their mastery.

North Carolina allocates up to $2 million per year to its symphony. State funding there has supported musician salaries and benefits.

“If we accept the proposition that it’s a net benefit to society,” Lam argues, “it should be funded like schools, hospitals, libraries, and roads.”

That responsibility belongs to the state, not a teenager.