Music and Migration — Angel Island Immigration Station

*times are subject to change

DEPARTURE:
San Francisco: 10:15AM
TIburon: 10AM & 11AM

POST-CONCERT

return to SF: 3:20PM & 4:50PM
return to Tiburon: 1:20PM, 2:20PM, 3:20PM, 4:20PM, 5:20PM

We suggest you visit AIISF’s website to plan your visit. You take a ferry from Tiburon or San Francisco. Then you bike, walk, or tram to the immigration station. The show times are arranged to accommodate the ferry schedules. If you need extra help figuring this out, don’t let it stop you from coming. Email us at kathryn@delsolquartet.com.

Please visit AAISF’s website to plan your visit. You have to take a ferry from Tiburon or San Francisco. Then you bike, walk, or tram to the immigration station.

Please contact kathryn@delsolquartet.com for accessibility questions. Ferries are ADA accessible. The shuttle prefers advanced notice.

Concerts are FREE with admission to the museum. $5 adult /$3 youth. We recommend you make a reservation so we can plan for how many people are attending!

September 12, 2026 @ 12PM Foreigners to the Familiar

Featuring world premieres by Dante de Silva and Josiah Catalan. 

Live poetry slam with Irene Faye Duller and Mei Chung

Pop-up art installation by Rhea Erice.

Participate in hands-on history activities. 

Del Sol Quartet invites audiences of all ages to celebrate the Filipino-American experience with world premieres by California composers. Dante de Silva’s “Aposematic” recreates the pressure of difference and the struggle to maintain individuality. Immensely innocent, sometimes madcap, anxious or cruel, the music shines day-glo bright as a poison frog, its colors a warning to potential predators. Josiah Catalan’s “Foreigners to the Familiar” interweaves live slam poetry by Irene Faye Duller and Mei Chung.

As Catalan explains, “Growing up as a Filipino-American in the Bay Area was a beautiful experience where I had friends from a number of different backgrounds and cultures. It was the type of place where we willingly took each other in and adopted each other as part of our broader communities. Some of this is reflected in the music I wrote, where there is music that alludes to the Bay Area Hyphy movement in hip-hop, the San Jose hardcore punk scene, and even the Bay Area Jazz scene – places that Filipinos have found community in as participants, artists, and leaders of their respective movements.

July 11, 2026 at 12:00 PM

Program: Wayfinding - 50 years of Hokule’a

A concert by the Del Sol String Quartet in partnership with Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation

Del Sol will be giving a world premiere of a new piece called Moananuiākea by composer Leilehua Lanzilotti. The new work for string quartet will be celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Hōkūleʻa’s first voyage to Tahiti.

Special activities led by Mark Ellis of the Polynesian Voyaging Society & Miki Tomita Okamoto of Wayfi

March 14, 2026

Facing the Moon suite with SF Poet Laureate Genny Lim & video interviews of the composers Vivian Fung, Meilina Tsui, and Theresa Wong. Special performances by elementary and middle school musicians of the Roar Shack program.

October 4, 2025 @ 11:30AM

Come explore the history of the Chinese immigrants on Angel Island with a musical performance by the Del Sol Quartet. In anticipation of Del Sol’s “Facing the Moon: Songs of the Diaspora” premiere with SF Poet Laureate Genny Lim, the 45 minute performance will highlight the Chinese diaspora experience with music by Theresa Wong, Lei Liang, Gabriela Lena Frank, Meilina Tsui, andJuncheng Zhong.

June 21, 2025 @ 11:30AM & 1:30PM

This program explores the history of the Picture Brides through music and oral storytelling.

Featuring Takuma Itoh’s “American Postcards - Picture Brides” and music by Andy Akiho & Erika Oba.

Art installation by Patricia Wakida.

March 15, 2025 @ 12PM

Women’s History Month

Celebrate women’s history month by learning about women important to Angel Island. We’ll be sharing stories of women like Tye Leung Schulze​, an Angel Island translator who was the first Chinese woman employed by the federal government, through music by Reena Esmail​ and Tania León​, alongside artwork by Flo Oy Wong​ and an exhibit curated by Andi Wong.

December 14, 2024 @ 12PM

American Han: Featuring Music By Jungyoon Wie

Del Sol violinist Hyeyung Sol Yoon will explore the long history of Korean immigration to San Francisco, specifically those who were seeking refuge from Japanese-occupied-Korea during the early to mid 20th century. The program will feature San Francisco-based composer Jungyoon Wie’s “Han”, which incorporates traditional Korean lullaby and an elegy that represents the complexity of han, a feeling of collective unresolved anger, grief, and regret amongst the Korean people.

World premieres by Hyeyung Sol, gamin, and new arrangement by Texu Kim.

September 14, 2024 @ 11:30AM & 2PM

Kaddish: Featuring Music By Derek David

THE CONCERT

We've combined music by Derek David  - his Quartet # 4 "Kaddish" and his own performances of Yiddish folk songs with short selections that give a wide view of Jewish-American music, from the Broadway standards of Jerome Kern to Ljova to Bay Area's own Gabriela Lena Frank.

The concert contains a spectrum of emotions: fun Yiddish songs, the Broadway song tradition, and Derek’s personal reflecting on mourning. “Kaddish” explores mourning through two Jewish folk melodies sourced from the Ruth Rubin Legacy Archives, indirectly reflecting on death, dying, and romance.

In a previous Del Sol concert with Derek , the audience - young and old - found a fresh viewpoint on Jewish-American experience, energized around Derek's intensely personal music. Suddenly, Yiddish seemed vital, complex, vibrant, funny and sad - not a dying language at all.

THE HISTORY

Approximately 8,000 Jews and Russians passed through Angel Island between 1910 and 1940.. According to the Angel Island Immigration Center’s Immigrant Voices Project, “historians have explored the long and often unjust treatment of Japanese and Chinese on Angel Island, much less is known about the thousands of Russians, Eastern Europeans and Jews who came to the U.S. via Asia.”

Two distinct waves included:

= Large numbers of Russian, Polish, and Lithuanian Jews began arriving at Angel Island in 1915. They were mainly men who had left their homes to escape the turmoil of war and military duty.

=At least 500 Jewish refugees made it to San Francisco and Yokohama in 1939 and 1940 to escape Nazi regimes.

March 23, 2024 @ 11:30AM & 1:30PM.

A special program featuring a string quartet meditation - Huang Ruo’s A Dust in Time. Program lasts 45 minute with activites available in the Hospital Building.

December 2, 2023 @ 11:30AM & 2PM

Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation with the Last Hoisan Poets