By Lee Cataluna
Advertiser Columnist

Bare feet and rubber slippers keep time against the legs of the folding chairs. Heads that have gone more salt than pepper bob and sway in the same rhythm as spiked hairdos and pink-streaked pony tails.

The University of Hawai'i Symphony Orchestra is a mixed bunch, to say the least, but director Henry Miyamura knows each one of his 79 musicians like they're old friends.

"I have a nuclear engineer who works at Pearl Harbor, Russell Yamada. He plays cymbals and bass drum. That cellist, Clifford Hand, he's a retired professor, I think it was chemistry, and when he retired, he went back to get a music degree. And Dana Furusawa, she's a unique one. She plays violin in the university orchestra, but she plays cello in the youth symphony, and she excels in both."

There's also a math teacher, a retired nurse, a former UH men's volleyball player, an astronomer and a high school 10th-grader who sit alongside the 47 college students who are enrolled in Music 416B Symphony Orchestra. Miyamura knows the details of each of their lives and the role music plays for them.

"She's going through chemotherapy and she still comes to every rehearsal," he says of one of his players. "And you should ask her about her experiences in Israel."

Miyamura doesn't recruit musicians from the community to play with the UH Symphony Orchestra. It's more a matter of, they show up and he lets them stay. "They come because they love to play," he says.

For some of the players, though, that's only part of it.

"Bottom line," says first violinist Darren Kimura, "a lot of us are here because of him."

Kimura, a mortgage broker, is one of several in the group who, as a child, studied under Miyamura's direction with the Youth Symphony.

"He's a perfectionist," Kimura says. "He's scary enough that he can hear the one person playing the wrong note when everyone is playing together."

Miyamura has taught music for 42 years. This is his 25th year at UH, and at age 63, he has no thought of retiring.

He tells the orchestra members the story of the moment he knew music would be his life's work. As an elementary school student, he and his friends would take the bus, called HRT back then, down to Kuhio beach to go fishing. "We would get on the bus with our spears," he recalls, demonstrating with his baton. "They would let you do that in those days. And when we went home, we got on the bus with our squid."

One time, he got off the bus, and there at Queen's Surf was the Royal Hawaiian Band playing in concert. Miyamura was drawn in by the music. "I was just an elementary school student," he remembers, "and, oh, that just lit a fire in me."

He had to beg his mother to let him play in the band. He was a sickly child, and she was worried that learning an instrument would be too taxing on his body. After the band director convinced his mother that playing would actually strengthen his lungs, Miyamura started playing the clarinet in seventh-grade band at Central Intermediate school. From there, he never stopped.

He has dedicated his career to making sure others who love music have an opportunity to play. And though he is a perfectionist about the music, his big heart often wins out over his sensitive ears.

"If you're willing to work hard, even if you're not that good, he'll let you stay," Kimura says. "He gives people a chance. If you're good but you don't work hard for him, he'd just as soon kick you out.

Stories abound about Miyamura's quest for perfection. "During rehearsal, he will make the violins move their chairs, like, six inches forward just to balance the sound in the concert hall," Kimura says.

"Once, we spent 15 minutes waiting while he tried to get the cymbal player to get the right sound. Try it this way, try it that way. It all sounded the same to us," Kimura recalls.

Harpists Stephanie Llacuna and Ruth Freedman nod in agreement. Llacuna is 24 years old, a 2001 graduate of Ohio State who recently moved to Hawai'i, where her husband grew up. She's seven months pregnant, and she says the baby moves around during the "loud parts" of the music. Freedman, who is 65, is a retired nurse who used to play harp for her patients.

"What an honor it is to be playing with these music majors and peerless musicians and with a genius conductor," Freedman says. "I don't care if I only play 10 minutes of a program. I go home satisfied."

Right now the symphony orchestra is rehearsing for the winter concert. It's called "Mostly Spanish" and features selections including Bizet's Carmen Suite No. 1 and Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez. "I wanted to call it 'The Influences of Spanish Music on Western Music,' but I think maybe that was too long for a title," Miyamura says.

The concert will be held Dec. 2 at 8 p.m. at the Blaisdell Concert Hall. Tickets are $10 for adults, $6 for students and can be purchased at the UH Campus Center or at the Blaisdell Concert Hall the night of the performance. The orchestra members are also selling tickets, but as Kimura points out, for students, "When you finally move out of your parents' house it's hard to turn around and ask them to come to your concert."

There's no budget for advertising the concert, so the orchestra is relying on word of mouth. Freedman called UH President Evan Dobelle's office to make sure he knew he was invited. "We've heard he's a great fan of the arts," Freedman says. There's even talk of asking Dobelle to guest-conduct a number. The orchestra would be happy to add a university president to their already diverse roster.

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.