[MUSIC - Huang Ruo: Angel Island]

Alison Stewart: You're listening to the fourth movement of Angel Island, an oratorio from my next guest, composer Huang Ruo, that will make its New York premiere this week. The piece was first performed in 2021 on its namesake, an island off San Francisco that, from 1910 to 1940, was the site of the Angel Island Immigration Station. The station operated as a detention center for immigrants, many of them from China and other parts of Asia, a more hostile counterpart to New York's Ellis Island.

The National Park Service estimates the station processed nearly a million immigrants over 30 years. It also describes a "prison-like environment," where men and women were locked in dormitories and unable to move freely. One of the remnants of the building's years as a detention center appear on its walls where people would carve inscriptions during their detainment. More than 200 poems in Chinese were inscribed into the immigration station like this one.

The floating clouds, the fog, darken the sky.

The moon shines faintly as the insects chirp.

Grief and bitterness entwined are heaven-sent.

The sad person sits alone, leaning by a window.

Some of the poems make up a bulk of the text of Ruo's oratorio. This piece also features historical writings and context for the years that preceded the center's opening, which included the Chinese Exclusion Act passed in 1882. Angel Island will be staged at BAM, Brooklyn Academy of Music, directed by Matthew Ozawa, this Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. For a preview, I'm joined by Huang Ruo. Hi, Huang.

Huang Ruo: Hello.

Alison Stewart: Matthew Ozawa. Hi, Matthew.

Matthew Ozawa: Hi, good afternoon.

Alison Stewart: Good afternoon. Huang, why did you want to adapt this history into an oratorio?

Huang Ruo: Well, as an immigrant myself, I also experienced the feeling of coming into a new country with lots of hope and lots of unknown. When I first received a poetry book from Charlton Lee from the Del Sol Quartet, it just strikes me deeply of what happened on the Angel Island. I could read those original texts in Chinese characters and almost I can feel their voice through those words. From that, we decided to create a stage work or a stage oratorio, opera theater, depends on what you want to call it, to really show our audience about this dark history of Asian-American journey.

Alison Stewart: Matthew, when and how did you become familiar with Angel Island?

Matthew Ozawa: I worked with Huang Ruo in the past directing his An American Soldier at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. While Huang Ruo was writing this during the pandemic, we were chatting about it. When he asked me to direct it, I knew this was really going to be a piece I wanted to delve into. I'm fourth-generation Japanese American. My father was born in an internment camp. I found out in directing this work that my great-grandmother was a picture bride from Japan in the early 1900s and was actually detained in immigration station.

There's a resonance, I think, to my own heritage, my own family history, as it relates to the hundreds of thousands of people who were detained in this station, and the nature of our collective Chinese-American and Asian-American history as it pertains to exclusion and prejudice and racism and how we as a collective and how we as a country need to be resilient and hopeful moving forward, but also cognizant of how we welcome immigrants into the country.

Alison Stewart: Huang, how does oratorio, orchestra, and voices allow you to tell the story? What are you able to convey about the story with this genre?

Huang Ruo: When I read the poem, I know immediately this needs to be sung through natural human voice because that's the most direct way to express ourselves, not just in words but also with music. To that, I chose a string quartet because the nature of the string quartet sound also carries this longing and feeling, could be joyful and could be sad. It is written for a vocal ensemble of 12 voices and a string quartet.

With that, when I was writing it, it was during the pandemic, of course, and with the rise of anti-Asian sentiment and hate crimes beating around the country. That brought me more urgency of not only having the performance, just musicians standing on the stage and sing, but also we should make that as a stage work because it's more dimensional. The audience will feel so real happening in front of them. It will emphasize the message it contained. That was the moment I decided this is not just an oratorio but actually is an opera theater.

Alison Stewart: Matthew, yes, let's talk about the production that people will see at BAM this weekend. I understand it is also going to feature dancers and film and visual elements. Would you share with us what's been included in the bigger production?

Matthew Ozawa: Yes, it's a huge collaboration with so many different artists. As Huang Ruo mentioned, obviously, we have the Del Sol Quartet, who are featured, The Choir of Trinity Wall Street. Archival filmmaker Bill Morrison has created films that are throughout the entirety of the piece. Rena Butler, just an incredible choreographer, has created choreography for two of the dancers. The set design is by Riw Rakkulchon, costume design by Ashley Solomon, lighting design by Yuki Nakase Link.

Very multidisciplinary, very interdisciplinary, and multicultural. The piece itself is slightly non-linear and non-narrative. It features moments of focus on our history. For example, the Chinese Exclusion Act or the Page Act of 1875, but it also features these very poetic scenes with the chorus and the string quartet fused with the dancing and the film that showcase the poems that are sung. The choir is fully memorized and so everything is completely staged throughout the performance.

Alison Stewart: We're discussing Angel Island, which will be at BAM this Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. I'm speaking with composer Huang Ruo and Matthew Ozawa, who is the director. Huang, I'm going to ask you to give us a little bit of a history lesson. The Angel Island Immigration Station opened in 1910. What had existed before it? How had immigration worked?

Huang Ruo: For that part, if I'm correct, it was used to have maybe stations for some kind of a military base. It was used as an immigration center from 1910 onwards, particularly for immigrants from Asia. Not just China, but India, Japan, Korea, even some Russian, I believe, also came through. On the wall, because the building itself was made of wood because it's in the Bay Area and there were earthquakes, so they make this huge complex with wood.

Because of that, majority of the Chinese detainees were able to carve the poetry into the wall. Of course, the officers did not know those poetry, so they thought it was just a graffiti. They painted over it. They patched over it to cover it and then new ones would reappear, so that's how we get to more than 200 of them. I believe in the '40s, in 1940s, at that time, US and China became allies to fight the Nazis.

Because of that collaboration, it became a little uncomfortable to have a detention center to contain Chinese immigrants. I think this place was shut down. Maybe there was also a fire also if I remember correctly. It has not been used until later on, I think either '60s or '70s when they were going to demolish the building. Then there is a ranger, Alexander. He discovered this painting.

He doesn't know what it is. Just pictures or painting or something. He brought someone to look at it. Then they discovered these are poetries carved in by the detainees during the detention period. Then there was a grassroot movement to collect funds. There was a foundation being created to save this very historical site. He was able to maintain, renovated, and now became the Angel Island museum of immigrant.

Alison Stewart: We actually had a text from someone. It says, "I visited Angel Island, powerful historical reminder of the Chinese Exclusion Act, also book of poems carved into the walls. Looking forward to the oratorio." Matthew, what do we learn about the conditions and what it was like to be on Angel Island from these poems? What did they tell us?

Matthew Ozawa: Yes, these poems really depict an array of emotions. We're talking about individuals who were coming to America. I think many of them thinking that they were coming to a different, a better life. Obviously, so many of the Chinese were brought over to build the transcontinental railroad. Then, obviously, in the 19th century, so 1800s, they were perceived as threats to the job market and to the economy, which, of course, resulted in these incidences such as the Chinese massacre of 1871 in Los Angeles, which resulted in the hanging of 17 to 20 Chinese immigrants.

Then as you mentioned, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the first and only law implemented to prevent all members of a specific ethnic group from immigrating to the US. Those that were then detained, thinking that they were coming to freedom, seeing that on the other side of the bay, they were really stuck on this island, stuck inside of this immigration station.

Those poems really do also show some of the hope of what could be possible, but also anger and resentment and frustration and sadness over being sort of stuck in this station. What's really fascinating and when you visit the station, what such a haunting quality is that these poems were sort of puttied and painted over by the officers. Those detained continued to carve into the walls. You see these poems that feel like erasure on the walls, poems that are more deeply carved in there.

There's something very haunting about that. The many, many different lived experiences that were held, hundreds of people within the rooms of this immigration station. All of this hauntingness and the nature of looking back at this past, we hope to recreate through the perspective of a modern-day Asian woman who comes across these artifacts of her great-grandmother and of these poems and of pictures and start to teach her about her Chinese-American past.

Alison Stewart: Huang, the text of your piece is largely based on the poems and the inscriptions. What was your process for selecting what poems to include?

Huang Ruo: Back then, I was thinking. I want to create a logic to use this poetry. In a way, I found four poems. They create a chronological order. The first poem is called The Seascape. It's about arrival to the island. It's about one person's journey via crossing the ocean and coming to the island. In front of this person is the wooden building. This person did not know what's inside yet.

The second poem is about someone who was detained on the island for quite some time, could be several months already. This person's mentality went a little beyond the normal self to put it politely. Through the poetry, you actually could feel this person's anger, but also kind of insanity in those words. This person imagined wish to have a weapon, a concealed weapon to take revenge of what this person was suffering. Of course, that was not real. That was not possible.

The third poem is about a death of a detainee and written by his or her friends to honor this person full of regret and full of sadness. It's about funeral and it's about the process of coping of a dead friend. The last one is a departure of someone was being sent off back to where they came from, and sadly living this long peak surrounded by the ocean. That's the name of the poem. It forms a journey of arriving, living, death, and departure. That was my logic to create the singing scenes of the Angel Island.

Alison Stewart: We're discussing Angel Island, which will be at BAM this Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. I'm speaking with composer Huang Ruo and director Matthew Ozawa. The text of the oratorio also includes historical writings from the decades prior to the opening of Angel Island. I want to play a clip from Movement Three, which features some historical context. Let's take a listen.

Recording: The American consul in Hong Kong from 1875 to 1877, David H. Bailey, was put in charge of regulating which Chinese women were actual wives of laborers, allowed to travel to the United States as opposed to prostitutes. Bailey set up the process with the Hong Kong authorities and the Tung Wah Hospital Committee, an association of the most prominent Chinese businessmen in Hong Kong. Before a Chinese woman could immigrate to the United States, she had to submit an official declaration of purpose in emigration and personal morality statement, accompanied by an application for clearance and a fee to the American consul.

Alison Stewart: Matthew, how does the piece benefit from broadening the scope to include historical material?

Matthew Ozawa: I think it gives a broader context to everything that those who were detained, what was happening in the nation around them. I think reasons for why the exclusion and why these prejudices really existed and the hardships that they had to go through in being questioned in their travels to get here. There's something very resilient in the fact that we as Asian immigrants and generations forward are still here and are building bridges for the next generation. I think there's something about recalling and connecting and learning from our heritage and our past and our ancestors' experience coming to America that can really help us to feel empowered and to ignite discourse and empathy and understanding towards those coming into the country.

Alison Stewart: Huang, you originally premiered this piece on Angel Island in 2021. What was it like to stage this work in the space that inspired it?

Huang Ruo: Back then was at the height of the pandemic, we wasn't really staged because the space was very limited. Wooden floor, wooden wall, with all these rusted poles full of the inside to support the building. Everyone was masked, including the singers. We were originally not allowed to sing inside due to the pandemic policy. Then we were going to perform outside, but then it starts raining. Forecast is it's going to rain. This is the Bay Area in November.

[laughter]

Huang Ruo: Then we were allowed to go in, but the condition is everybody, including the audience, conductor, everyone needs to mask and the singer. Two performances also now, people actually heard about it, read about it. They took ferries coming to see this piece. It's quite a long journey. Nowaday, you would say going to a-- is kind of a performance art, right? You have to engage the audience to take a ferry to travel to see.

I remember doing the performances. I personally shed tears in my eyes because I could feel the spirits coming out from the wall and standing there and listening to us. Because of the buildings made of wood, it was so resonant. Acoustically, it's beautiful, to put it that way. It doesn't need any amplification. Every song is so clear and it's so quiet. All the audience was just taking in every bit of sound and the words. It was an experience. It's unique and won't be like anywhere else, I should say.

Alison Stewart: Matthew, after someone sees Angel Island, what do you hope are some of the conversations people have? What do you hope people talk about afterward when they go for coffee or a drink?

Matthew Ozawa: I think something that I experienced in delving into this piece is learning about my own family history and the immigrants that have come to this country. I hope that in seeing this piece, people will reflect on their own journeys, that they will see people on the street differently. I think we so often just pass people and don't make eye contact and live in our little bubbles, but really, we're a confluence of so many cultures and ethnicities and people who have journeyed across the globe to be here in America and be here in New York City. I hope that there's dialogues with people that you wouldn't expect to talk to because this is everyone's story. It's not just ours.

Alison Stewart: Angel Island will be at BAM this Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. I've been speaking with its composer, Huang Ruo, and it's director, Matthew Ozawa. Thank you so much for making time today.

Huang Ruo: Thank you.

Matthew Ozawa: Thank you.

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Alison Stewart: The new film, American Fiction, is about an erudite yet frustrated author who goes ignored by publishing until he writes a novel, embracing all the stereotypes about Black life in America, and has the biggest hit of his career much to his chagrin. Jeffrey Wright is earning raves for his performance and he joins me next.

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