The Last Hoisan Poets take part in the premiere performances of Huang Ruo’s Angel Island – Oratorio for Voices and Strings, on Friday, October 22, 2021 at 8:00pm at the Presidio Theatre, and two performances at 11:30am and 1:40pm on Saturday, October 23rd on Angel Island.
The poets read three poems that were carved into the immigration station barrack walls. The poems were chosen by composer Huang Ruo as the text for Movements II, IV and VI Nellie Wong reads “The Seascape,” Flo Oy Wong reads, “When We Bade Farewell,” and Genny Lim reads “Beneath Clay And Earth.”
No one, not even a film, can truly reenact this painful history authentically through acting, sound, and feelings. As an Asian-Amercian artist and composer of today, my intention was to look back on this history from who I am, where I am, and when I am today. In looking back on the true historical stories, writings, Chinese characters carved into the wall, I tried to understand their meanings and message, and then to bring them back into a contemporary America today to create a musical project and piece that not only can be informing the history, but also can be reflecting on the present, and (in hope) can be inspiring the future.
— HUANG RUO
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 for Voices and Strings will bring these poems to life in the very space they were created. Composed by Huang Ruo, the 60-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.
