Pianist Hyperion Knight will join Maui Pops Orchestra and Jimmy Borges Sunday at the MACC

Maui Pops Orchestra, with featured guests Hyperion Knight and Jimmy Borges, performs in the MACC's Castle Theater at 3:30 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $10, $21, $26 and $36 plus applicable fees, and half-price for kids 12 and younger; available at the MACC box office, 242-7469 or www.mauiarts.org.

After backing Keali'i Reichel earlier in the year, the Maui Pops Orchestra returns to the MACC with a Spring Fest concert based on the theme of a Las Vegas review featuring veteran jazz singer Jimmy Borges and pianist Hyperion Knight. Besides the acclaimed pianist and singer the program will include magician Cameron Keyes and an Elvis Presley contest.

Known for the diversity of his repertoire, Knight's recordings range from Beethoven and Stravinsky to Gershwin and the Beatles. In addition to regular appearances with orchestras across the United States, he has been a featured entertainer at Manhattan's Rainbow Room and Essex House, and he makes frequent concert presentations on luxury cruise lines.

A Gershwin enthusiast, he has recorded two CDs devoted to unique arrangements of Gershwin's music, and frequently performs "Rhapsody in Blue" and the "Concerto in F," most recently with the Santa Fe, Long Beach, Tennessee and New Mexico symphony orchestras. "Not since Heifetz has anyone played Gershwin solos with this much panache," praised an American Record Guide review. "The songs glitter like jewels against black satin."

Accompanied by the Maui Pops Orchestra with guest conductor Jim Durham, Knight will play Rachmaninov's romantic "Piano Concerto No. 2," and a solo Gershwin medley.

Singing professionally for more than 50 years, Borges was bestowed with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Na Hoku ceremonies last year. Performing in a range of venues, from night clubs to casinos, from symphony concerts to jazz festivals, he has appeared in movies and TV shows including "Magnum, P.I." and "Hawaii Five-O."

A frequent performer in Las Vegas, Frank Sinatra honored Borges by providing free access to his musical arrangements. He was allowed to select from a library of more than 2,000 arrangements ones that he wanted to use in concert. He chose 68, which Borges has estimated are worth about $750,000. Borges is reportedly the only singer ever allowed complete access to Sinatra's legendary musical arrangements. He will sing the best of Sinatra on Sunday.

"I sing the music the way it's written; I'm faithful to his music," Borges has said. "I try to invoke that inherent sense of honesty in the singing. When Frank sang ballads he never hit you over the head with it and you still believed him when he said he loved someone or was devastated by a broken love affair."

The Elvis Presley competition will feature the top three performers from auditions held on Feb. 27 at the Maui Mall, hosted by Jerry Eiting. Contestants were required to wear Elvis costumes, and sing one of six Elvis songs including "Hound Dog" "Jailhouse Rock" and "Blue Suede Shoes."

Magician Keyes, billed as "An Above-Average Who-dini," will perform his illusions while the orchestra plays a musical medley.

The Maui Pops Board of Directors celebrated music and art and teamed up with Lahaina Galleries at the Shops of Wailea and award-winning artist Ronaldo Macedo, November 1st, to thank donors who are playing an important roll in sutstaining the orchestra's ongoing success.

More than 70 guests feasted on a sumptuous array of pupu, viewed art from 30 international artists and six paintings of Conductor Stuart Chafetz created especially for the event and available for purchase.

Gallery owner Jim Killett and Macedo donated a giclee print for a prize drawing. Called "Siblings," the print features keiki Summer and Ocean Macedo frolicking on a beach. Ed and Judy Mee of Makawao were the lucky winners and were thrilled to meet the artist, his wife and his children who were the subjects of the giclee.

Stuart Chafetz, music director of the Maui Pops Orchestra, leads the musicians performing for local students at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center's Castle Theater on Monday morning, following the Pops successful Halloween Spooktacular Concert on Sunday, October 26th.

More than 2,000 keiki got a chance to experience composer Sergei Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf" during two separate performances. In addition, they listened to musical selections from "Harry Potter" as well as the theme from "Mission Impossible." Members of the orchestra also had a chance to show the audience what their individual instruments can do. A friendly skeleton waited for the musicians onstage before the performance.

Prizes were awarded during the Halloween Spooktacular for the best costumes in different divisions. We thought you'd enjoy seeing the winners of the Keiki division. We had a tie for first place, voted for by audience applause. After several attempts to select a clear winner, the audience determined they were both 1st Place Winners. We're sure you'll agree that Liam, Thomas the Train's engineer and Townsend, the Laundry Boy richly deserve the joint award.

The Maui Pops Orchestra received a $2,000 grant from the Jose L. Romero Memorial Fund to be used for honorariums for Maui musicians playing in the orchestra. The orchestra brings light classical concerts to Maui, to schoolchildren and to the senior community unable to attend concerts at the Castle Theater. The conductor is Stuart Chafetz. The Romero fund is a donor-advised fund of The Hawai'i Community Foundation.

A swaggering pirate was dancing with a sleek black cat; three little witches were twirling and cackling; and Alice in Wonderland was running around asking everyone, "Please, have you seen my rabbit?" And that was just the dance floor of the Maui Pops Orchestra Halloween Spooktacular Concert at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center's Castle Theater last Sunday.

Up on the stage, a ghoulish orchestra of gypsies, ballerinas and giant winged insects played their violins, trombones and trumpets in a whirl of energy. And leading them all was Count Dracula himself, conductor Stuart Chafetz. Black cape swirling, Chafetz led the orchestra through a clap-filled romp of fun and spooky favorites, from "The Entrance of the Gladiators" to the theme from "The Pink Panther."

It was a delightful, Halloween-ish afternoon for Maui residents and their families something less scary than the usual haunted house, something with a little more "pop" than the usual parade . . something just a bit more "classical."

"Are you having fun?" Chafetz leaned down and asked the bobbing sea of kids on the dance floor at one point during the afternoon. "Yes!!" they shouted back in chorus.

"See, we gotta start 'em young and get 'em going in classical music!" Chafetz gleefully told the audience.

Founded in 2004, the nonprofit, community-based Maui Pops Orchestra specializes in bringing contemporary and light classical music to a broad audience.

It also specializes in having as much fun as possible, which is why last year, Chafetz emerged from a coffin to conduct the orchestra. This year, the coffin rose in a cloud of smoke but when a costumed Death opened the lid, nothing was in it! Then, as an eerie laugh sounded from the back of the stage, Chafetz came striding out to lead the musicians in a rollicking "Monster Mash." Gary Shin-Leavitt sang the mad scientist's role, as the Maui Concert Chorus of the Maui Choral Arts Association "aaa-ooo"ed in costume from the edges of the stage.

Many audience members were also in costume, and Chafetz prefaced each musical selection by scanning the audience for appropriate costumes. "Do we have any sea creatures here?" he asked before the familiar haunting strains of the "Jaws" theme began. "Any poodle skirts?" before a "Back to the '50s" medley.

For "Funeral March of a Marionette," the orchestra was joined onstage by the young dancers of the Maui Academy of Performing Arts. The dancers acted out the wooden movements of dolls under the enthusiastic direction of young puppet master Ryan Foree.

Now that the crowd was warmed up, the dance floor was lowered into place in front of the stage. Fairy princesses and firemen were already gathering in the aisles, ready to swing and swirl to the orchestra's "Big Bands Selections." Couples tangoed, dads twirled their daughters, and toddlers bounced up and down to Duke Ellington's "Don't Get Around Much Anymore."

During intermission, judges circulated looking for the best costumes, and the second half included an informal "clap-off" Costume Contest. First prize went to a pair of aliens in the adult division and an adorable peacock in the keiki division. In the orchestra, second bassoonist James Perlman captured first prize as a giant insect, although first violinist (and Maui Pops "founding father") Jim Durham also received acclaim in a blond wig and pink tutu topped off with combat boots and a beard.

The audience was in for a treat when vocalists Debra Lynn and Jerry Eiting walked onstage to sing a thrilling duet: "All I Ask of You" from "Phantom of the Opera." Masked choral singers lined the upper balconies and both sides of the stage to sing "Masquerade" - a setup that looked wonderful in their festive costumes, but didn't allow the sound to blend quite as well as it might have.

Then the buttery-voiced Eiting returned with "Music of the Night," garnering bravos from the audience.

As the theme from "Spider-Man" began, a Spidey-suited second violinist Jaz Jernaill leapt to the stage and prowled the theater, to the watching kids' delight. "We don't really have fun in this orchestra; you can tell it's kind of boring!" Chafetz quipped to the audience, as he brought everyone back for an enthusiastic encore.

After almost 2 spooktacular hours, it was time to go home, but many of the kids on the dance floor would have been happy to stay as long as the orchestra would play. Now how's that for some early classical music appreciation?