The word “departure” generally refers to the physical act of leaving a place. However, departure also indicates a deviation from one’s traditional course of action or way of thinking. 

As we close out this season of Sounds Current, Charlton and esteemed collaborators reflect on their experiences related to the development and subsequent productions of Angel Island. How have the music, the conversations, and their experiences on Angel Island shaped their understanding of the current immigration debate in the US and beyond? How has being a part of the project affected their personal narratives and understanding of family history? And what does the future hold for this project as a whole? 

And how is the audience receiving the piece? For the first time in this series, we hear immediate reactions..

Part 4 Features:

Matthew Ozawa, Stage Director, New York premiere of Angel Island

Andi Wong, Teaching Artist and Arts Advocate

Genny Lim, Poet, Playwright, Performer, and Pioneer

Casey Dexter-Lee, State Park Interpreter II for Angel Island

Susan Moffat, Principal, Future Histories Studio

Huang Ruo, Composer, Angel Island

Ben Kreith, Del Sol Quartet violinist

Kathryn Bates, Del Sol Quartet cellist

Hyeyung Sol Yoon, Del Sol Quartet violinist

Sidney Chen, Singer, Volti San Francisco

Ed Tepporn, Executive Director, Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation

And numerous audience members from the 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.

Featured Music Provided By:

Meilina Tsui

Byron Au Yong

Theresa Wong

Timo Chen

Taylor Ho Bynum

Erika Oba

Juri Seo

Order Huang Ruo’s A Dust in Time here, listen in Spotify or your favorite music streaming service.

The Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation invites you to Immigrant Voices, a growing archive of personal stories of Pacific Coast immigrants. Explore here.

LEARN MORE:

https://www.delsolquartet.com/podcast

Del Sol Quartet on Spotify

Facebook

Instagram

YouTube

CREDITS:

Hosted by Charlton Lee

Produced by Andrea Klunder, The Creative Impostor Studios, Charlton Lee, Kathryn Bates, Hyeyung Sol Yoon, Ben Kreith

Story Editor: Andrea Klunder

Sound Design: Andrea Klunder

Technical Director & Post Production Audio: Edwin R. Ruiz

Field Producer & Recording Engineer: Kathryn Bates

Field Producer: Verena Lee

Podcast Manager: Alex Riegler

Show Notes: Lisa Widder

Cover Art: Felicia Lee

Theme Music: Charlton Lee

Executive Producers: Andrea Fellows Fineberg, Don Fineberg

Featured music from The Angel Island Oratorio composed by Huang Ruo. Performed by Del Sol Quartet & United States Air Force Band's Singing Sergeants / National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, recording and edited by Suraya Mohamed.

We never experience a story in the same way twice. Sure, key elements remain firmly in place, but variables like political era, maturity, staging, and even the weather permeate each telling and play a vital part in the life of the piece.

Charlton invites Del Sol collaborators to elaborate on their roles in the creation, performance, and ongoing support of The Angel Island Project. What role did the COVID-19 pandemic play in the development of the piece? What was it like to play the oratorio in the place that inspired it? How has interpretation of the piece expanded outside the confines of Angel Island? What can art teach us about 20th-century immigration policies, and how can it inform 21st-century solutions?

Part 3 Features:

Huang Ruo, Composer, Angel Island

Sidney Chen, Singer, Volti San Francisco

Kathryn Bates, Del Sol Quartet Cellist

Andi Wong, Teaching Artist and Arts Advocate

Susan Moffat, Principal, Future Histories Studio

Ben Kreith, Del Sol Quartet Violinist

Casey Dexter-Lee, State Park Interpreter II for Angel Island

Genny Lim, Poet, Playwright, Performer, Pioneer

Hyeyung Sol Yoon, Del Sol Quartet Violinist 

Taylor S. Armstrong, Senior Master Sergeant, United States Air Force Band

Featured Music Provided By:

Erika Oba

Timo Chen

Byron Au Yong

Theresa Wong

Jungyoon Wie

Order Huang Ruo’s A Dust in Time here, listen in Spotify or your favorite music streaming service.

The Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation invites you to Immigrant Voices, a growing archive of personal stories of Pacific Coast immigrants. Explore here.

LEARN MORE

https://www.delsolquartet.com/podcast

Del Sol Quartet on Spotify

Facebook

Instagram

YouTube

CREDITS

Hosted by Charlton Lee

Produced by Andrea Klunder, The Creative Impostor Studios, Charlton Lee, Kathryn Bates, Hyeyung Sol Yoon, Ben Kreith

Story Editor: Andrea Klunder

Sound Design: Andrea Klunder

Technical Director & Post Production Audio: Edwin R. Ruiz

Field Producer & Recording Engineer: Kathryn Bates

Field Producer: Verena Lee

Podcast Manager: Alex Riegler

Show Notes: Lisa Widder

Cover Art: Felicia Lee

Theme Music: Charlton Lee

Executive Producers: Andrea Fellows Fineberg, Don Fineberg

Featured music from A Dust in Time and The Angel Island Oratorio composed by Huang Ruo. Performed by Del Sol Quartet. Angel Island also features the United States Air Force Band's Singing Sergeants / National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, recorded and edited by Suraya Mohamed.

Much like Angel Island, the project, Angel Island, the place, is a point of entry, connecting many visitors to a history they know nothing about––and reminding some of a traumatic past they'd rather forget. 

Del Sol Quartet violist Charlton Lee and collaborators draw audiences into the world of Angel Island, a tranquil state park in San Francisco Bay dotted with winding trails and a campus of restored wooden buildings that once served as a processing station, interrogation hub, and detention center for mostly Asian immigrants between 1910 and 1940. 

What is the island like today, and what may life have been like for the 500,000 newly arrived individuals and families who landed here a century ago in search of a better life? And what is the emotional legacy of the stories that may never have been told from one generation to the next?

This conversation contains brief, graphic mentions of suicide. Please take care when engaging with the episode.

Part 2 Features:

Casey Dexter-Lee, State Park Interpreter II for Angel Island

Hyeyung Sol Yoon, Del Sol Quartet violinist 

Kathryn Bates, Del Sol Quartet cellist

Ed Tepporn, Executive Director, Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation

Emiko Ono, Director Of Performing Arts Program at The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation

Andi Wong, educator and collaborator, Angel Island Project

Genny Lim, poet and collaborator, Angel Island Project

Music in this Episode Provided By:

Theresa Wong

Ken Ueno

Timo Chen

Taylor Ho Bynum

Jungyoon Wie

Erika Oba

Byron Au Yong

The Angel Island Immigration Station Foundations invites you to Immigrant Voices, a growing archive of personal stories of Pacific Coast immigrants. Explore here.

RESOURCES  & LINKS

Huang Ruo

Angel Island Immigration Station

Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation

Immigrant Voices Oral History Project

Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island 

Genny Lim

The Last Hoisan Poets

William & Flora Hewlett Foundation

The National Archives at San Francisco (San Bruno)

LEARN MORE ABOUT DEL SOL

https://www.delsolquartet.com/podcast

Del Sol Quartet on Spotify

Facebook

Instagram

YouTube

CREDITS

Hosted by Charlton Lee

Produced by Andrea Klunder, The Creative Impostor Studios, Charlton Lee, Kathryn Bates, Hyeyung Sol Yoon, Ben Kreith

Story Editor: Andrea Klunder

Sound Design: Andrea Klunder

Technical Director & Post Production Audio: Edwin R. Ruiz

Field Producer & Recording Engineer: Kathryn Bates

Field Producer: Verena Lee

Podcast Manager: Alex Riegler

Show Notes: Lisa Widder

Cover Art: Felicia Lee

Theme Music: Charlton Lee

Executive Producers: Andrea Fellows Fineberg, Don Fineberg

Welcome to Angel Island. With stunning views of San Francisco Bay and lush hiking trails, the island is nestled between the promise of the Golden Gate Bridge and California’s sun-soaked mainland coast. But between 1910 and 1940, hundreds of thousands of Asians arriving at the Angel Island Immigration Station faced separation, interrogation, and often deportation under the longstanding Chinese Exclusion Act. 

The ghosts of Angel Island, however, endure. Poems carved into the soft wooden walls of the detention barracks give voice to long-remembered frustration, humiliation, and loneliness of the immigrants detained  there. These inscriptions in Chinese calligraphy link that shameful past to our present immigration debate, bringing history into the reality of our current lives.

In Part One, violist and founding member of the Del Sol Quartet, Charlton Lee, introduces both Angel Island's history and the creatives behind The Angel Island Project. A collaboration between Del Sol and composer Huang Ruo, this haunting oratorio for string quartet and chamber choir weaves together poetry and music in a poignant, powerful expression of history, hope, and humanity. 

Part One Features Interviews with: 

Charlton Lee, Del Sol Quartet violist

Huang Ruo, Composer and conductor

Kathryn Bates, Del Sol Quartet cellist

Hyeyung Sol Yoon, Del Sol Quartet violinist

Ben Kreith, Del Sol Quartet violinist

Ed Tepporn, Executive Director, Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation

Andi Wong, Teaching Artist and Arts Advocate

Genny Lim, Poet, Playwright, Performer, Pioneer

And the voices of Susan Moffat, Matthew Ozawa, and Emiko Ono.

RESOURCES  & LINKS

Huang Ruo

Angel Island Immigration Station

Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation

Immigrant Voices Oral History Project

Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island 

Genny Lim

The Last Hoisan Poets

ArtsEd4All

The Chinese Historical Society Of America

William & Flora Hewlett Foundation

UC Berkeley Global Urban Humanities Initiative

LEARN MORE

https://www.delsolquartet.com/podcast

Del Sol Quartet on Spotify

Facebook

Instagram

YouTube

CREDITS

Hosted by Charlton Lee

Produced by Andrea Klunder, The Creative Impostor Studios, Charlton Lee, Kathryn Bates, Hyeyung Sol Yoon, Ben Kreith

Story Editor: Andrea Klunder

Sound Design: Andrea Klunder

Technical Director & Post Production Audio: Edwin R. Ruiz

Field Producer & Recording Engineer: Kathryn Bates

Field Producer: Verena Lee

Podcast Manager: Alex Riegler

Show Notes: Lisa Widder

Cover Art: Felicia Lee

Theme Music: Charlton Lee

Executive Producers: Andrea Fellows Fineberg, Don Fineberg

Featured music from The Angel Island Oratorio composed by Huang Ruo. Performed by Del Sol Quartet & United States Air Force Band's Singing Sergeants / National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, recorded and edited by Suraya Mohamed.

How does a string quartet help build community from Chinese immigrant poetry carved into detention-center walls on Angel Island? Let their words sing out after 100 years of silence.

Season 1 of Sounds Current with the Del Sol Quartet follows the quest to shine light on San Francisco’s Angel Island, a site of detention and dehumanization for Chinese immigrants in the 1900s. We travel with the creatives behind The Angel Island Project, including composer Huang Ruo, poet Genny Lim, educator Andi Wong and more. Sounds Current: Angel Island explores how we make compassionate art that builds community.

***

San Francisco’s Del Sol Quartet believes that music can, and should, happen anywhere - screaming out Aeryn Santillan’s “Makeshift Memorials” from a Mission District sidewalk or a rural high school, bouncing Ben Johnston’s microtonal “Americana” off the canyon walls of the Yampa River or the hallowed walls of Library of Congress, bringing Huang Ruo’s “Angel Island Oratorio” home to the island detention barracks or across the Pacific to the Singapore International Arts Festival. 

Since 1992, Del Sol has commissioned or premiered hundreds of works from diverse composers. Their performances provide the possibility for unexpected discovery, sparking dialogue and bringing people together.

CREDITS

Hosted by Charlton Lee

Produced by Andrea Klunder, The Creative Impostor Studios, Charlton Lee, Kathryn Bates, Hyeyung Sol Yoon, Ben Kreith

Story Editor: Andrea Klunder

Sound Design: Andrea Klunder

Technical Director & Post Production Audio: Edwin R. Ruiz

Field Producer & Recording Engineer: Kathryn Bates

Field Producer: Verena Lee

Podcast Manager: Alex Riegler

Show Notes: Lisa Widder

Cover Art: Felicia Lee

Theme Music: composed by Charlton Lee, performed by Del Sol Quartet

Executive Producers: Andrea Fellows Fineberg, Don Fineberg

LEARN MORE

https://www.delsolquartet.com/podcast

Del Sol Quartet on Spotify

Facebook

Instagram

YouTube

Featured music from The Angel Island Oratorio composed by Huang Ruo. Performed by Del Sol Quartet & United States Air Force Band's Singing Sergeants / National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, recording and edited by Suraya Mohamed.