Del Sol Quartet

I must have been in 1st grade or Kindergarten

when some kid said the “N” word in front of me

and I didn’t know what it meant but I wanted to find out

It kept rolling around in my head

What is it? A name? Is it a good name?

I said it out loud at home, and remember my Dad looked sad.

I must have been in 4th grade

when we had to take the Missouri Assessment Program (MAP) test

and to tell the state how smart we were

We also had to tell them what race we were

“Select One Answer” but I needed two bubbles to be honest

I asked my teacher “why can’t I fill in ‘black’ and ‘white’”

And she said “just fill in black”

and she looked sad.

In high school, I was on the swim team

My brother was on the swim team

We were both really good. We were both Varsity champions and captains.

Someone said, “I didn’t even know black people could swim”

another said, “well, you’re only good athletes because you’re black.”

I was sad.

I went to college, and was the only mixed student in the music department.

-Another time being One of The Only and this never has seemed to change even now-

I played saxophone in all of the top ensembles- I was first chair bari sax in every group we had. I earned that.

A guy I knew made black jokes all the time.

“you’re so white though”

“haha it’s just because you’re black though isn’t it?”

I slapped him across the face at a party once. Hard. I wasn’t even drinking

I was just so mad.

So mad.

I live in New York City now.

You can be whoever you want

You can be nobody

The anonymity of solitude

The fame of individuality

I love it.

Every day I’m myself.

Just a drop of creamy coffee

in the pantone of people here

I am comfortable. I am happier.

But, I read the news

I read what the things people I went to high school with are posting

And how “all lives matter” though so why are you complaining

And “well, he shoulda just listened to the cop and that wouldn’t have happened”

And needing to build a wall

And needing to take back our country

And needing to keep our guns

And needing to build up our police force

And needing to these thugs

I cry a lot when I read the news

So much hurting

Because of the bubble they’re asked to fill out on an exam form

Because someone forgot to use a turn signal

Because they “fit the description”

I can’t breathe.

I am sad.

I am black, I am white. I am both. I get to be both. I can choose. I could choose.

But who cares?

What does my mask entitle me to?

I’ve been followed around a store before

I got a DWB (driving while black) in summer once when I was really tan

A coworker said the “N” word a bunch around me but “oh, well I thought she was Mexican”

I was accused of “using the race card”

My opinions have been scrutinized

It matters to me what I feel

But it doesn’t matter- does the 1 drop rule still apply?

not dark enough to shout it from the rooftops but not white enough to be alright either so

just another day being One of The Only

America is a big place.

A lot of people live in it.

Some people understand everyone’s pain

And some people want “the good old days” back.

We should be able to choose individually

Who we wanna be/what we want to do/how we get to live

But as of late we haven’t been able to, and it gets summarized in the headlines:

Rich White Dude Raped a Woman and Went to Jail for like 20 Seconds

Poor Black Kid was Killed for No Real Reason.

Was killed.

So what do we have to say for ourselves, hm?

What do you have to say for yourself?

What do we even say?

“liking” and hash-tagging have helped some so far

I don’t even know if God is listening – white jesus maybe but

We keep saying all these things over and over

But what’s the use? What’s the truth?

Dead horse is done beat to death more and here we are kicking away at it

so what do we do? What can we say?

So what do you have to say for yourself?

What do I have to say for myself?

What do we even say?

Say it

Say it

Say it

The word zeher means poison in Hindi. At the time I was working on this piece, I developed a pernicious case of strep throat, that three separate sets of antibiotics, over more than a month, couldn’t seem to cure. It became increasingly difficult for me to swallow, to speak and even at times, to breathe. It was through this frustration, defeat and feeling of complete and literal voicelessness that I wrote Zeher.

This piece uses two raags – Todi and Bhimpalas. Todi, at least to my Western ears, sounds dark and sinuous, as if reaching into a void, beyond what can be can comfortably seen or understood. Bhimpalas, to me, feels more centered and stable, if still melancholy. At the end of the piece, the Todi melodies in the cello are slowly washed over by the violins in Bhimpalas, lulling it slowly as it heals.

There is no way I could have known that the premiere album of this work, Brooklyn Rider’s Healing Modes, would be released in March 2020, at the very beginning of the pandemic — where we would be forced to confront a world where a virus would render so many people unable to breathe — and that the piece would take on a new meaning, a more urgent call for healing.

Program notes:  Reena Esmail

“Esencia” para cuarteto de cuerdas was commissioned for the Del Sol String Quartet through a grant from the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University. Through her first string quartet, Léon recollects her surroundings and childhood in Cuba. In her explanation of the piece, she makes reference to the more abstract meaning of esencia (“the essence or initial point that determines behavior and style”), but she also explains that the title given to each movement of the work represents the name of a fragrance that surrounded her while growing up in Cuba:

“Agua de florida” is a cologne that was very popular among my neighbors. They used this cologne to clean and create a good spiritual vibration in their homes. Agua de rosas is another aroma that I recognized from that time, a favorite of my grandmother. Her name was Rosa. Agua de manantial is an aroma attributed to flowing fresh water in the countryside by the forests, near the farmers’ homes. People claimed that the waters of a manantial had healing attributes.”

Program notes: Hyeyung Sol Yoon

Between 1910 and 1940, as new immigrants flowed through the immigration station on Angel Island inside the San Francisco Bay, Chinese immigrants faced massive discrimination because of America’s earliest racist immigration legislation – the Page Act of 1875 and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The first restrictive immigration law, the Page Act of 1875, denied entry of Chinese women under the pretext that any East Asian woman who arrived would be engaging in prostitution. In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act expanded the ban to include Chinese men as well. The Exclusion Act was the first, and remains the only, law to have been implemented to prevent ALL members of a specific ethnic or national group from immigrating to the United States. Being held for sometimes up to years in brutal conditions at the detention center, many of these immigrants looked for solace by inscribing poetry onto the walls of the center. Composed by Huang Ruo, "ANGEL ISLAND- Oratorio for Voices and String Quartet" is inspired by these poems, weaving a story of immigration, discrimination, and confinement - bringing history into the reality of our current lives.

A note from the composer Huang Ruo:

No one, not even a film, can truly reenact this painful history authentically through acting, sound, and feelings. As an Asian-Amercian artist and composer of today, my intention was to look back on this history from who I am, where I am, and when I am today. In looking back on the true historical stories, writings, Chinese characters carved into the wall, I tried to understand their meanings and message, and then to bring them back into a contemporary America today to create a musical project and piece that not only can be informing the history, but also can be reflecting on the present, and (in hope) can be inspiring the future. For the movements (II, IV, VI) involving the Chinese characters, as they are written in old Chinese (文言文）and in poetic form, the Chinese characters are concise, symbolic, and at times abstract, yet full of rich metaphors and meanings. This gave me space to elaborate, imagine, and expand with my own art form and thoughts. As a Chinese immigrant myself, I also carried the feeling and understanding of leaving my family and everything behind, coming into a new foreign land alone by myself with so much unknown ahead, homesickness, and fear. All these personal feelings are also consciously or unconsciously embedded in my writing. With the anti-Asian hate and racism towards Asians and Asian-Americans rising in our country since the pandemic, that also influences my writing as well. Therefore, ANGEL ISLAND is a work that converges and woven many currents and counter-currents of life, space, and time into one piece of artistic fabric.

ANGEL ISLAND – Oratorio was commissioned by the Del Sol Performing Arts Organization for the Del Sol String Quartet. It was created with funding from the Hewlett Foundation “50 Arts Commissions, with additional funds from the Clarence E. Heller Charitable Foundation and the Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation. It was premiered by the Del Sol Quartet and Volti on October 21 & 22, 2021 at the Presidio Theatre in San Francisco and the Angel Island Immigration Station on Angel Island.

Program notes: Huang Ruo

…the deceptively simple and direct-seeming American folk hymn “Amazing Grace,” generating variations of steadily increasing rhythmic and microtonal profusion, always securely grounded in new-old once more frontier-fresh modal tonality capable of wide proportional spaces: new reaches of consonance and metrical intricacy which push the boundaries of intelligible complexity beyond horizons conceivable in the confines of conventional tuning. This is the world of String Quartet No. 4.

-- note by Ben Johnston

Biography

Ben Johnston (b. 1926), called “the best non-famous composer this country has to offer” (NY Times), writes challenging works using “just intonation” that incorporate elements of neoclassicism, serialism, jazz, hymns and songs. Born in Macon, Georgia, he began piano lessons at the age of six and started composing at age 11. He pioneered the use of microtones and non-tempered tuning, to which he was introduced through the work of Harry Partch while earning his Master’s degree at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. Johnston worked with Partch in CA, studied with Darius Milhaud at Mills College and later with John Cage. He taught theory and composition at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for 30 years, retiring as Emeritus Professor of Music. Johnston’s compositions include works for opera, theater, dance, orchestra, chamber ensembles, voice, piano, and tape. In 2007 the American Academy of Arts and Letters honored his lifetime of work, and he has received other national and international grants, awards and commissions.