Wednesday, September 29, 2021

An Oratorio Inspired by Angel Island

Next month Bard College will launch the fourth season of its China Now Music Festival. This Festival was conceived to introduce music from contemporary China to the United States and to promote musical exchanges with China. Over the course of the second week in October, the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts will host a series of concerts and discussions, the last of which will be live-streamed.

Text on a wall of the Angel Island Immigration Station (from the City Box Office event page)

The following week the Festival will relocate to Bard Music West, here in San Francisco. Bard will host the world premiere of Angel Island - Oratorio for Voices and Strings, composed by Huang Ruo. The strings for the performance will be the members of the Del Sol string quartet: violinists Sam Weiser and Benjamin Kreith, violist Charlton Lee, and cellist Kathryn Bates. The voices will be the members of the Volti a cappella vocal ensemble. The libretto is based on poems inscribed on the walls of the Angel Island Immigration Station by those interned there during the years of the Chinese Exclusion Act.

The world premiere of this one-hour oratorio will take place at the Presidio Theater, beginning at 8 p.m. on Friday, October 22. Tickets are being sold through a City Box Office Web page at prices from $35 to $100 with $20 admission for students and youth. However, this concert will be followed by two additional performances on Saturday, October 23. These will take place at 11:30 a.m. and 2 p.m. [update 10/20, 11:08 a.m.: Due to a change in the ferry schedule, the afternoon performance will begin at 1:30 p.m.] at the Angel Island Immigration Station. General admission will be $55 with a $45 rate for students under the age of eighteen. These tickets are being sold through an Eventbrite Web page, which also allows for the purchase of a roundtrip ticket on the ferry shuttle between Ayala Cove and the immigration station. The price of the ferry ticket is $11 with a $2.30 processing fee.

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