The Angel Island Project
“Works like ‘Angel Island’ can help us reconnect with the past in a new way.”
ANGEL ISLAND: ORATORIO
Between 1910 and 1940, as new immigrants flowed through the immigration station on Angel Island inside the San Francisco Bay, Chinese immigrants faced massive discrimination because of America’s earliest racist immigration legislation – the Chinese Exclusion Act. Being held for sometimes up to years in brutal conditions at the detention center, many of these immigrants looked for solace by inscribing poetry onto the walls of the center.
ANGEL ISLAND – Oratorio brings these poems to life in the very space they were created. Composed by Huang Ruo, the 110-minute oratorio for string quartet and chamber choir will weave a story of immigration, discrimination, and confinement - bringing history into the reality of our current lives.
Our new podcast “Sounds Current,” tracing the story of this project, is launching!
“...a remarkable act of posthumous restitution...A century after the trauma of Angel Island, Huang [Ruo] ha[s] ushered them to land.”
UPCOMING PERFORMANCES
June 10 - Tribeca Festival
Podcast is official selection of the 2024 Tribeca Festival, for audio storytelling independent nonfiction
PAST PERFORMANCES
January 11-13, 2024: New York City Premiere
Next Wave Festival, co-presented by Brooklyn Academy of Music and Prototype Festival
Produced by Beth Morrison Projects in association with Brooklyn Academy of Music
May 19-20, 2023: Singapore
May 2, 2023 @ 7PM: Washington DC
Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art
co-presented by Washington Performing Arts
with The U.S. Air Force Band's Singing Sergeants
July 15, 2022 @ 6PM: Santa Fe, NM
with the Santa Fe Opera
at Site Santa Fe
Fang Tao Jiang, soprano
Yi Li, tenor
Nina Yoshida Nelsen, mezzo-soprano
Yichen Xue, bass
July 17, 2022 @ 10:30AM: Albuquerque, NM
co-presented at Chatter with Santa Fe Opera
Fang Tao Jiang, soprano
Yi Li, tenor
Nina Yoshida Nelsen, mezzo-soprano
Yichen Xue, bass
December 3, 2022: Berkeley, CA
University of California – Berkeley
with the UC Berkeley Choir
Saturday October 23, 2021 @ 1:30PM
Angel Island Immigration StationSaturday October 23, 2021 @ 11:30AM
Angel Island Immigration StationFriday October 22, 2021:
Presidio Theatre (San Francisco, CA)Relevant Tones podcast with Seth Boustead talks with Huang Ruo and violist Charlton Lee about Angel Island Oratorio.
“Far from just a mere recall of history, this is an act of transmutation.”
Anna May Wong – Certificate of Identity National Archives
Detained in this wooden house for several tens of days,
It is all because of the Mexican exclusion law which implicates me.
It’s a pity heroes have no way of exercising their prowess.
I can only await the word so that I can snap Zu’s whip.
From now on, I am departing far from this building
All of my fellow villagers are rejoicing with me.
Don’t say that everything within is Western styled.
Even if it is built of jade, it has turned into a cage.
– From the walls of Angel Island Immigration Station, author unknown, Poem 69 from Island, p. 134.
Collaborators:
Collaborators include:
Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation (co-sponsor)
Chinese Historical Society of America
Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center
The Last Hoisan Poets
Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at SFSU
Dianne Feinstein Elementary School
Bard College - China Now Music Festival (preview excerpts performed and streamed)
The October 2021 premiere included the performance of Angel Island: Oratorio by Volti & Del Sol Quartet as well as:
Talk from Ed Tepporn, ED of Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation
Talk from Julie Soo (Presidio Theatre only)
Poetry Reading from The Last Hoisan Poets
Historical exhibits by the Chinese Historical Society of America (Presidio Theatre only)
Angel Island Photography Exhibit
This project is created with funding from a Hewlett Foundation 50 Arts Commission. Find out more about Hewlett’s initiative. Additional funding has been provided by the Clarence E. Heller Charitable Foundation, the Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation, and Grants for the Arts. The premiere events are co-sponsored by the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation. Exhibits sponsored in part by the North East Medical Services.
ADDITIONAL PROGRAMS
A Dust in Time
On October 15, 2021 - we released a coloring book album of Huang Ruo’s quartet mediation “A Dust in Time.” It released at #3 on Billboard charts and got some love the from NY Times, in addition to a release celebration at the Museum of Chinese in America in NYC!
Angel Island Insight
Del Sol Performing Arts Organization’s “Angel Island Insight” explores the history of the Angel Island Immigration Station by offering a suite of virtual and in-person programs that examines the musicality of the disappearing Hoisan-wa dialect by The Last Hoisan Poets and The Del Sol Quartet. Also, a mini-course of Angel Island’s poetic history in collaboration with the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at San Francisco State University; and a community online art exhibit, “Angel Island: In Sight 2021.” These presentations will also expand public engagement with the premiere of composer Huang Ruo’s Angel Island - Oratorio for Voices and Strings in October 2021. Charlton Lee, founder of the Del Sol String Quartet adds, “As an Asian American artist, this opportunity to showcase a history that has both a direct connection to my ethnicity as well as a global connection is incredibly empowering.”
Our community program “Angel Island Insight” was made possible with support from California Humanities, a non-profit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities, with additional support from the Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center. A Visit www.calhum.org.
Angel Island Elementary School Program
Check out the poetic collaboration with the Last Hoisan Poets or the incredible artwork from students of Dianne Feinstein Elementary School in San Francisco, both part of the project’s community program.
Our Dianne Feinstein Elementary School program was made possible with support from the San Francisco Arts Commission.
