Ellis Island: The Dream of America
On PBS's Great Performances
Broadcast on June 29, 2018 (check local listings)
pbs.org
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| Pacific Symphony performing Peter Boyer's Ellis Island: The Dream of America (photo: Joshua Sudock) |
It’s not often that a contemporary music composition is front and center on PBS’s long-running Great Performances broadcasts. But on June 29—just in time for Independence Day (check local listings)—a 2017 performance of Peter Boyer’s Ellis Island: The Dream of America is presented from the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall in Orange County, California. Played by the Pacific Symphony under conductor Carl St. Clair, the work includes seven performers (Barry Bostwick, Camryn Manheim, Michael Nouri, Lesley Fera, Lucas Near-Verbrugghe, Samantha Sloyan and Kira Sternbach) reciting the very words—sometimes stirring, sometimes mundane, but always heartfelt and real—of some of the actual immigrants who stepped onto our shore during the early part of the 20th century at Ellis Island after passing by the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor.
The timely broadcast of Great Performances—Ellis Island: The Dream of America with Pacific Symphony comes during Immigrant Heritage Month, and Boyer’s soaring score—accompanied by dramatic archival photos of the American immigrant experience—provides a huge emotional impact. The work has been performed nearly 200 times by more than 80 orchestras since its 2002 premiere, and was a 2005 Grammy nominee for Best Classical Contemporary Composition.
Boyer spoke by phone recently about Ellis Island: The Dream of America’s road to this Great Performances broadcast and its relevance in today’s highly charged political climate.
Kevin Filipski: Ellis Island: The Dream of America was first performed in 2002, but is only now being presented on Great Performances. Can you explain this long and winding path?
Peter Boyer: It’s been a learning process. As soon as I composed the piece I had hoped it would end up on PBS and spent a few years trying to get that accomplished on my own. I had development deals with a couple of production companies but it never happened the way I envisioned it. I had hoped it would be done on Ellis Island, but the funding to make that happen was prohibitive. What led to this broadcast were connections to Pacific Symphony: two of its board members are recipients of the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, a yearly award given by the Ellis Island Honor Society for a variety of accomplishments. Pacific Symphony had performed the piece in 2005, and the idea first arose of a celebration for Ellis Island medal recipients in Southern California. It was pitched to PBS So Cal and Great Performances and ultimately, they got the go-ahead and raised a significant amount of money in a short amount of time. (Conductor) Carl St. Clair programmed the work during the symphony’s 2016-17 season but also the centerpiece of its American Composers Festival, which was a real honor. The key was that the chairman of Ellis Island Honor Society gave a significant gift that got it off the ground. It’s very expensive to mount—it’s a big orchestra, and it’s a huge endeavor to make that happen for the Symphony’s first national broadcast. It was a surreal moment to watch and hear my name on the program.
KF: How did Ellis Island: The Dream of America come about?
PB: The idea hit me around 1999 or 2000. I had been thinking about undertaking a major project with an American theme, and having grown up (Boyer was born in 1970) and knowing the end of the Emma Lazarus poem (“give me your tired, your poor…”), the history and symbolism of it was part of my upbringing and resonated with me. One day it hit me that Ellis Island would be a fascinating subject. My first thought was: has someone else done this? I couldn’t find anything, which surprised me. So I started to do research and learned about the Ellis Island Oral History project, and I knew that such a treasure trove of first-person accounts would define the piece. I set about trying to secure a commission, and my first idea was to organize a consortium and have several orchestras co-commission it. The Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts in Hartford (Boyer attended The Hartt School at the University of Hartford) was the sole commissioner.
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| Composer Peter Boyer (left) onstage with conductor Carl St. Clair (photo: Joshua Sudock) |
KF: What was your process while researching and composing?
PB: I worked on it for just under a year, and five months of that was research and creating a script before writing the music. I went to Ellis Island twice and looked through over 100 oral histories out of more than 2000, a small fraction to read. I knew I wanted a diversity of stories, both women and men, stories from multiple countries, and a diversity of mood and emotions. I knew there would be heavy material and humorous stories as well as emotional counterpoint. If it spoke to me directly, personally and compellingly, I chose it. I initially thought of ten—five men and five women—but that turned out to be too many, so I picked seven—four women and three men—from Europe and Russia from 1910 to 1940. It was hard to whittle down the script because I wanted all the words to be their words, without adding any material.
KF: How do the visuals work with the music?
PB: I had always envisioned an elaborate full-length visual presentation that would draw on the music and the stories. Because of my limited resources, I had chosen 100 or so photos from the Ellis Island archive for the prologue and epilogue. But for this broadcast, it’s more elaborate and filmed in high-definition, so I was thrilled that Pacific Symphony hired a team to work with me. They differentiated among the prologue, the epilogue and the personal stories, and the hundreds of photos from many sources totally surpassed anything I had done before. There’s a massive circular screen custom-built for the hall, which is there if they ever need it for other events. I think audiences are affected by the piece even more because of those added visuals.
Q: Have you found Ellis Island resonating now in a way it might not have even two years ago?
A: It’s been performed on a regular basis since it was composed, but absolutely there has been an uptick in the amount of performances in the last year and a half. For example, this September, it will be performed ten times by six different orchestras. There are impassioned opinions on immigration in the news, which I couldn’t have foreseen when I wrote the piece, which essentially takes a positive approach to American immigration. It’s not a political piece, it’s a historical piece. But people have found a relevance to the stories of these people who were driven by their desire to come to America, and people see the relevance to what’s happening in America today.
Ellis Island: The Dream of America
On PBS's Great Performances
Broadcast on June 29, 2018 (check local listings)
pbs.org
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