Singer Loretta Ables is looking forward
to performing with friends on Saturday.

"Not necessarily in that order," Ables confided between sets last weekend in the Lewers Lounge. She opened as resident vocalist of the Halekulani hideaway exactly six years ago this Sunday. On Saturday she's letting her longtime cohorts - bassist Bruce Hamada and pianist Jim Howard - play the first set as a duo while she appears with Yvonne Filius, Byron Nease and Larry Paxton in "Four Cabarets & A Cup of Joe " at the Hawaii Theatre.

"I love performing here because this is the music that I love the most in the entire world - Gershwin, Duke Ellington, Rodgers & Hart, and Cole Porter - but the dynamics are much lower because you don't want to be intrusive into people's conversations.

"On stage everything is bigger and grander and wider and your dynamics are huge but (because the audience is paying attention to you) you can (also) do the most subtle nuances in your performance. I'm really looking forward to it."

From one perspective the show is a return engagement. Ables starred as Effie in Tommy Aguilar's 1989 production of "Dream Girls" back in the days when the theater was still home to an assortment of pigeons and other wildlife.

"We couldn't even wear high heels on stage in case we hit termite damage, but (the theater) is so beautiful now!"

Eden-Lee Murray and Ray Bumatai rejoin pal
Loretta Ables on stage with "comedic realities."

Ables, Hamada and Howard make the room a romantic oasis of soft lights, good service and sophisticated music in contemporary Waikiki. Hamada plays acoustic bass; Howard acoustic piano with no synthetic add-ons.

The trio is taking the same approach to the songs they'll be recording early next year. The format will be acoustic jazz and pop standards. "No drum machines and absolutely synthesizer-free," Ables promises.

Ables shared her woes as a dateless single when she presided as mistress of ceremonies at a Diamond Head Theatre fundraiser last month. Well received as a quick-quipping comedienne, she also performed in a series of cabaret numbers.

"I met Larry and Yvonne doing the show at Diamond Head Theatre. Yvonne asked me to be part of this one. It's about relationships and how they've evolved from the '60s to the present."

"For the '60sI'll be doing a song about being fully aware of friendships and how much they mean to you, and falling in love for the first time. Yvonne will be doing a song about wanting to take the world by storm - that young feeling that nothing is insurmountable."

Ray Bumatai is writing a series of comedy sketches for the production. Bumatai and Eden-Lee Murray will add another perspective on on-again off-again relationships with a reunion performance by their "a.k.a." group as well.

"I think I'm threatening to men (and) I wish I wasn't," Ables said, "but I really feel blessed to be doing what I'm doing. If I could do this for the next 30 years I would consider that as successful as one could be. To sing the music you love five nights a week means more than one night at Carnegie Hill. And, it may look like I'm working but I'm cruising the room!"

What: "4 Bottles Cabarets & A Cup of Joe," with song, dream music by Clyde Pound and Unison and the children's chorus from DHT's "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat
When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday
Where: Hawaii Theatre, 1130 Bethel St.
Cost: $50, benefitting the American Heart Association
Call: 528-0506