MUSIC TO RECALL PAST DETENTIONS
The Old First Church in San Francisco provides an intimate but intense concert series with low-price tickets, and some real surprises—like world premieres.
On July 1 the timely new work was a hard-to-define, 23-minute multi-media opus, with music, theater, dance, narration, and pre-recorded percussion tracks having considerable political-historical significance. “Gateway—Stories from Angel Island” is the most unorthodox performance piece I’ve run across in years, cutting across many disciplines and cultures. It recalls the isle in S.F. Bay serving for decades as a detention center for (unwanted) immigrants, during the decades of our nation’s (Asian) Exclusion Act starting 1882 and running till after World War One. These echo major news of today, dealing with heated resistance to migrations from other directions.
Accounts from the detained provided the five narrated texts (in English), with musical accompaniment by Chad Cannon, unveiled July 1. The understated music for piano quartet highlighted the loneliness and yearning deeply embedded in the texts bemoaning “laws as harsh as tigers.” One writes, “How could my heart not ache?” and another, “I had a taste of all the barbarities.”
The anguish of the detained migrants, coming variously from China, Japan and Korea in the old days, was visibly played out by a costumed butoh dancer (Judith Kajiwara) in white-face on stage, making contorted, angular upper-body contortions.
This work could take on added dimensions if expanded by composer Cannon, who was unable to attend. Clearly, a greater involvement by the able members of the Bridge Piano Quartet, bringing greater instrumental participation, could produce a broader impact in the future, with more than the usual 50-75 or so patrons able to hear it. At present the score is like a skeleton prefacing a larger concept.
As for the saga of Angel Island as a detention/exclusion center (regarded by many as a festering sore in our history), it has been told resoundingly by area historians and authors like Judy Yung, Erika Lee and the late Him Mark Lai. Some of the accounts there had been poetic, left inscribed in wooden walls of the forbidding buildings still standing.
First violinist and anchor of the Bridge Piano Quartet is the well-known South Bay concertmaster, Cynthia Baehr.
Old First Church concerts: classical, jazz, variety, presented several times a week. 1751 Sacramento St., S.F. For info: (415) 474-1608, or go online.
