Feature: Hakamatsuka ’12 Preparing to Return for ‘Come Home’

It will be a homecoming of sorts for Aine Hakamatsuka '12 who is planning two concerts in Salina in the next year.

Hakamatsuka is a native of Japan and lives in New York City, but she spent four busy, formative years at Kansas Wesleyan University.

She will be one of the outstanding alumni performing at the "Come Home" concert on Oct. 19 at Homecoming 2024.

She and several other KWU alumni and instructors will re-dedicate the newly renovated, historic Sams Chapel. The auditorium is getting a facelift with up-to-date sound and lighting equipment, seating, and a new entrance and lobby.

In May, Hakamatsuka will be the soprano soloist when the Salina Symphony concludes its season with Mozart's Requiem.

Hakamatsuka performed with Kansas Wesleyan as a student, including lead roles in operas "The Marriage of Figaro" and "Hansel and Gretel."

Professor of Psychology Dr. Steven Hoekstra choregraphed some of her numbers for the operetta "The Pirates of Penzance."

She learned from that that opera was not the career direction she wanted to take.

"Personally, I don't think I'll pursue formal opera training, but it was fun to portray another character," she is quoted as saying in the 2010 yearbook.

"I guess was right about that," she said recently. "I enjoy the storytelling aspect of concert works more than acting on stage."

She chose Kansas Wesleyan because her English was not good and she thought she could get the individual attention she needed at a small university. She knew she wanted to attend an American college, so she signed up with a service in Japan to help her find the right fit.

"They take care of your applications for college in the U.S. I told them my interests, the size of school, and they get back to you with what the schools can offer me," she said. "I think I just went with the smallest school.

"If you go to a big school, the teachers aren't going to have much relationship with the students. My goal was to make sure I could get the help I needed from teachers. I absolutely made the right call."

Hoekstra's Introduction to Psychology was the largest class Hakamatsuka remembers taking at Kansas Wesleyan - 30 or 40 students.

"That was the biggest class, besides choir," she said.

Taking 20 hours or more a semester, participating in the operas, and trying to double-major in Music Education and Music Performance kept Hakamatsuka busy, very busy indeed.

Besides Psychology and Voice, Hakamatsuka learned web design and personal finance, one of her most useful courses, "especially if your career has some amount of freelancing," she said.

She also played trumpet for the KWU orchestra and jazz band, Theatre Salina, and Salina Symphony, and piano with the Salina Symphony and theatre. She was an assistant conductor of the youth symphony, as well.

She eventually had to drop the Music Education major because, she said, ironically, she failed the English exam.

Her English now is impeccable, with just a hint of a New York City accent, after 12 years in the city.

Hakamatsuka's first voice teacher at Kansas Wesleyan was Michelle Dolan G'24, then an adjunct instructor, now executive director of the Music Department.

One of her other professors helped her prepare for graduate school at the Manhattan School of Music, where she earned a master's degree.

She now has a full career of both solo and ensemble singing, influenced by her love of chamber music. Her repertoire ranges from baroque to contemporary.

Hakamatsuka is member of the illustrious Choir of Trinity Wall Street, Clarion Choir and Santa Fe Chorale, where she spent July.

"The Trinity Choir is a fully professional choir, and every single member is also a concert soloist," Hakamatsuka said, as she is.

About half of Hakamatsuka's work is through the church, she said, not only in choirs but also as a soloist. She has sung in the Barbican, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and many of New York City's most renowned churches.

She joined the Clarion Choir and The English Concert on their tour performing Handel's Solomon last year.

"Hakamatsuka is a versatile artist whose vocal flexibility and love for collaborative music-making have led her to a career spanning concert, opera and choral repertoire," said the Santa Fe Desert Chorale website.

But when she comes back to Salina, her first visit in maybe six years, it will sound like she's home.

Recently, Hakamatsuka took a quiz in the New York Times that was supposed to tell where she was from. The results indicated she was from Wichita, Kan.

That makes a kind of sense, she said, because she learned much of her English during her four years at Kansas Wesleyan.

Learn more about all the events scheduled for KWU Homecoming week.

Story by Jean Kozubowski

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