In honor of Immigrant Heritage Month, on June 29 PBS’s Great Performances series will broadcast the Pacific Symphony’s performance of Ellis Island: The Dream of America, led by Music Director Carl St.Clair. Composer Peter Boyer’s Ellis Island: The Dream of America uses texts from the Ellis Island Oral History Project and historic Ellis Island images in combination with Boyer’s orchestral score, and features first-hand stories of immigrants, which will be interpreted for the broadcast by actors Barry Bostwick, Camryn Manheim, Michael Nouri, Lesley Fera, Lucas Near-Verbrugghe, Samantha Sloyan, and Kira Sternbach. The special was recorded at the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall in 2017 during the Pacific Symphony’s seventeenth American Composers Festival. Since its 2002 premiere by the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, Ellis Island: The Dream of America has received nearly 200 performances by 81 U.S. orchestras. The program will be shown on June 29 at 9 p.m. on PBS stations nationwide, and will be available to stream the following day via http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/ and PBS apps.
Posted June 14, 2018
