Songs of the Diaspora

Premiering June 2025

Songs of Diaspora

Harmony with our female ancestors. Harmony within ourselves. The harmony of new encounters —vibrations we create between each other like tones interacting in the air. Harmony that is “creative and procreative.”

Told in the voices of mothers and daughters, across continents and generations, San Francisco’s first Asian American poet-laureate Genny Lim’s words anchor this multimedia performance with new music by Chinese-diaspora composers in the U.S. Theresa Wong, Vivian Fung and Meilina Tsui. Del Sol Quartet centers the collaboration, building on their transformative Angel Island Project. The musicians’ own histories, gathered through Genny Lim’s interviews, build connections between the musical sounds and Lim’s poetry.

As Del Sol cellist Kathryn Bates imagines:

"before there was much of anything, there was music, there was sound, there was a sound of our voice, there was the sound of our feet, there was the sound of our heartbeat and together we make sound together, together we make sound and we, we create something magical. This was the original magic. This was the original spirit, and we need to, we need this for each other. We need this to find a future."

This is a modular program and can be modified to the needs of the presenter and venue. Please contact us to discuss possibilities.

• String quartet-only

• String quartet plus poet

• String quartet and poet plus a multimedia experience

Artist Bios

Genny Lim is the first Chinese American poet to serve as San Francisco’s Poet Laureate. Former San Francisco Arts Commissioner and SF Jazz Poet Laureate, she has impacted the artistic community as poet, playwright, performer, teacher, and collaborator. She is the author of five poetry collections and an anthology of Senior Asian American memories. Her award-winning play Paper Angels, set at the Angel Island immigration barracks, was the first Asian American play to air on PBS’s American Playhouse and was produced throughout the U.S., Canada, and China. She is notably co-author of Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island.

JUNO Award-winning composer Vivian Fung has a unique talent for combining idiosyncratic textures and styles into large-scale works, reflecting her multicultural background. NPR calls her “one of today’s most eclectic composers” and The Philadelphia Inquirer praises her “stunningly original compositional voice.”  This is supported by many of her works, including Clarinet Quintet: Frenetic Memories, a reflection on her travels to visit minority groups in Yunnan, China; Earworms, commissioned by Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra, which musically depicts our diverted attention spans and multi-tasking lives; and The Ice Is Talking for solo percussion and electronics, commissioned by the Banff Centre, using three ice blocks to illustrate the beauty and fragility of our environment. 

Meilina Tsui is a Kazakhstan-born, Hong Kong-American composer, pianist, and educator based in Orlando, Florida. She is the first classical composer of Dungan descent whose music has been gaining international recognition. Tsui’s works explore her mixed heritage and uniquely intertwine elements of East Asian, Central Asian, and Western cultures. Described as "irresistible and emotionally convincing" (The Aspen Times), “high-spirited, lively, and colorful” (Texas Classical Review), her music has been commissioned and performed by Houston Grand Opera, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Aspen Music School & Festival

Theresa Wong is a composer, cellist, vocalist, and intermedia artist active at the intersection of composition, improvisation, and the synergy of multiple disciplines. A 2024 Guggenheim Fellow in music composition, her works include Fluency of Trees for solo cello and voice which premiered at the Other Minds Festival in 2022, She Dances Naked Under Palm Trees, commissioned by pianist Sarah Cahill for The Future Is Female project, and Harbors, co-composed with Long String Instrument inventor Ellen Fullman and chosen as one of The Wire’s top 50 releases of 2020.

This project is made possible in part by a grant from The Creative Work Fund, a program of the Walter and Elise Haas Fund that also is supported by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.