Programs
35 Years of Immersive Music with Del Sol Quartet: Water is Wide
Del Sol’s 35th anniversary season celebrates water. Inside our skin, we are mostly water. Our planet is blue with oceans. Cities are shaped by creeks, canals and culverts. Immigrants brave a perilous crossing in search of a new life. Surfers find bliss riding a wave. Discover concert programs, school residencies, and community activations that reconnect us to this life-giving resource.
Facing the Moon: Songs of the Diaspora (premiered in October 2025)
Video trailer for Facing the Moon
Told in the voices of mothers and daughters, across continents and generations, San Francisco first Chinese 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.
This is a modular program and can be modified to the needs of the presenter and venue. Click below to learn more.
Wayfinding: 50 Years of the Hōkūle’a
Moananuiākea is a new work for string quartet composed by Leilehua Lanzilotti celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Hōkūleʻa’s first voyage to Tahiti. Performances of the work can be supplemented by community engagement activities and educational resources around the subject of Polynesian Voyaging.
Angel Island Oratorio
Del Sol and the Singing Sergeants at the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art in D.C. in May 2023
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 Chinese Exclusion Act. Being held for sometimes up to years in brutal conditions, many of these immigrants looked for solace by inscribing poetry onto the walls of the center.
We are presenting three ways of telling the story of Angel Island.
Huang Ruo’s Angel Island - Oratorio with string quartet and chamber Choir
String quartet-only movements of Huang Ruo’s Angel Island - Oratorio interspersed with music by Asian-American composers
Theatrical production by Beth Morrison and Prototype Festival (click here for more info)
The Resonance Between
Del Sol, Alam Khan, Arjun Verma, and Nilan Chaudhuri at the Presidio Theater in October 2023
Energy, clarity and virtuosity connect across traditions. Any doubt about this was dispelled by whoops of approval from the full-house audiences on both nights of the San Francisco premiere. This collaborative project creates a contemporary musical synergy that speaks to North Indian musical connoisseurs and neophytes alike.
Alam Khan is the grandson of Allauddin Khan, the music legend who trained India's 20th century cultural ambassadors Ali Akbar Khan and Ravi Shankar, both revered for their astonishing classical virtuosity as well as for their visionary east-west collaborations.
Performers: Del Sol Quartet, sarodist Alam Khan, sitarist Arjun Verma, and tablaist (tba)
Dust In Time
Recorded in October 2020 at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco
Like a Tibetan sand mandala, Huang Ruo’s A Dust in Time grows from the central essence-point of silence towards the colored fullness of ecstasy before returning to its source. The music offers a pathway to ever-expanding possibilities. We’ve shared this experience in a wide variety of settings - from a sandbank in the Yampa River to an art exhibit at the Smithsonian. Originally a one hour cycle, the piece can also be performed in 30 minute or 90 minute versions.
This is a string quartet-only program