Ellis Island: The Dream of America
Ellis Island: The Dream of America, composer/conductor Peter Boyer’s most ambitious work to date, celebrates the American immigrant experience and the American dream. Innovative in its format, the work brings elements of the theatre and multimedia into the concert hall, employing actors and projected historical images from the Ellis Island archives. Performances will be presented by the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra and actors from the Kalamazoo Civic Theatre.
The spoken texts for the work come from the Ellis Island Oral History Project, an historic collection of interviews with actual immigrants about their experiences emigrating to America. After extensive research in this archive, Boyer chose the stories of seven immigrants who came to America through Ellis Island from disparate nations between 1910-1940. He fashioned short monologues from the actual words of these immigrants, and wove them into an orchestral tapestry which frames and comments on their stories—by turns poignant, humorous, moving and inspiring. The work concludes with a reading of the Emma Lazarus poem The New Colossus (“Give me your tired, your poor…”), providing an emotionally powerful ending to this celebration of our nation of immigrants.
photo credit: John Lacko (concert images) and the Ellis Island Immigration Museum (historical images)
Schedule
All performances are sold out.
Thursday, March 24, 2011 | 10:00 AM (sold out)
Friday, March 25, 2011 |
10:00 AM (sold out)
WMU Miller Auditorium
The performance runs 44 minutes.
Admission/Fees
Admission is $2.00 per student or use the EFA Presents! Admission Credit for grades K-8.