One of the composers we’re featuring in Passport to America: The Immigrant Story is not just alive, he’s actively working and demonstrating the unique cultural richness that immigrants bring to our country.

In September of 2016, the San Francisco Opera premièred Bright Sheng’s opera Dream of the Red Chamber to a sold-out month-long run, featuring a libretto by David Henry Hwang, the well-known author of the Tony-winning play M. Butterfly, and Sheng himself. The story is based on one of China’s greatest literary masterpieces.

Sheng says, “I consider myself both 100% American and 100% Asian.” Born in Shanghai, he moved to New York in 1982 and studied music at Queens College and Columbia University. In 2001, Sheng received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, better known as the “genius grant.” The MacArthur Foundation called Bright Sheng “an innovative composer who merges diverse musical customs in works that transcend conventional aesthetic boundaries.”

A protégé of Leonard Bernstein, today Sheng is the Leonard Bernstein Distinguished University Professor of Composition at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor. In an interview with The Journal of the International Institute at the University of Michigan, Sheng said:

“Am I Chinese? Am I American? Am I Chinese-American? I have lived in the United States since my mid-twenties. The other part of me is Chinese, a person who grew up in China and whose outlook was formed there, in school and while working in Qinghai province near Tibet. I am a mixture. Identity cannot be decided by political boundaries. I used to think that ideally, one should be born in one place and live and work in that same place. Now I don't think it's terribly important. I've decided to accept that. Now I actually enjoy the fact that I can live in, and enjoy and appreciate two different cultures.”

The Cape Symphony will perform the Dream of the Red Chamber Overture as part of Passport to America: The Immigrant Story; visit capesymphony.org or call 508-362-1111.