Music, a Master Players tradition that fuses music with multimedia and
interdisciplinary elements, enters its 12th year this February. This
year’s entry in the series will celebrate the 75th anniversary of
the Allied victory over the Axis powers in World War II with the world
premiere of the chamber music play, Shanghai Sonatas. Combining
musical theater, live classical music, and visual art, Shanghai
Sonatas is a pioneering new musical conceptualized, produced and
composed by Xiang Gao. Other creators include Master Players
Playwright-In-Residence Alan Goodson; lyricist Joyce Hill Stoner,
named professor and founding faculty of UD’s Art Conservation
doctoral program; stage director Chongren Fan from New York City; and
visual art designer David Brinley, faculty of the UD Art Department.
This hybrid new musical is supported by the Shanghai Jewish Refugee
Museum, the UD Interdisciplinary Humanities Research Center, a
University General Research Grant and generous private donors.
Synopsis: A Chinese-American classical violinist—who no longer feels
at home in either America or China—arrives in Shanghai to give a
concert. He stumbles upon restored violins from the Jewish Ghetto of
Shanghai that, when played, transport him back to Japanese-occupied
Shanghai of the 1930s and '40s, where he follows the wartime
experience of some of the 450 world-renowned classical musicians among
the 20,000 Jewish refugees who found safe haven there and who trained
the first generation of Chinese classical musicians, including
Xiang’s own relatives. The refugees' music kept them alive and
bridged the connection with the local people. In seeing the Jewish
refugees struggle with their belonging in their strange new land, and
finding that his musical heritage can be traced through his family
back to them, he discovers a sense of his own belonging as an
immigrant struggling to forge a balance between his own two cultures.
music
concerts
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16/02/2020 Last update