• A couple people walking through a field with some grave markers with mountains in the distance.

    MTU Music Professor's Research Honors Hawaiian Ancestors, Leads to First Composition

    Two decades of research into his family's place in Hawaiian history inspired a Michigan Tech associate professor of music to create the tone poem "Kalaupapa" — his first musical composition. Researchers often pursue topics they are connected to. In the case of longtime conductor and first-time composer Joel Neves, inspiration struck a deeply personal chord, bound by a sacred promise. Neves, an associate professor of music in Michigan Technological University's Department of Visual and Performing Arts, spent more than 25 years researching his family's genealogy and discovering the fate of his Hawaiian ancestors. The painful truth he uncovered is the inspiration for his tone poem "Kalaupapa," which he recently conducted with the University of Hawai'i Symphony Orchestra at Kennedy Theatre in Honolulu, Hawaii.

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