iMusic 12: Shanghai Sonatas - A Chamber Music Play

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.