Kinetic Ensemble & Musiqa present "The Strangers' Case"

We are thrilled to partner with Musiqa to present the world premiere of Canadian-American composer Karim Al-Zand’s (pictured above left) The Strangers’ Case. The GRAMMY® award-winning, Lebanese-American tenor Karim Sulayman (pictured above right) joins the ensemble for this song cycle for tenor and string orchestra that gathers poems and other turn-of-the-century accounts by immigrants to the United States, and situates them among texts from canonically venerated authors including Shakespeare and Dickinson.

“Lady in the Harbor” is the story of a young Polish girl destined for the textile sweatshops, and “Such an Illumination” comes from a Syrian refugee fleeing persecution in his homeland. “Island of Angels” excerpts lines written in the wake of the 1882 Asian Exclusion Act. This anonymous poem, translated from Chinese, was found inscribed on the walls of a San Francisco Bay immigrant detention facility.

The Strangers’ Case will be preceded by the incidental music to Igor Stravinsky’s ballet Apollon Musagète, which he wrote contemporaneously with many of Al-Zand’s texts. Both the composer and his longtime collaborator, choreographer George Balanchine, have cited Apollon as a turning point in their careers: the pair themselves later immigrated to the United States, where their professional partnership continued to flourish.
In Al-Zand’s words, “The Strangers’ Case aims to remind us of our shared history, fraught as it is with contradiction, filled with both selfless generosity and selfish indifference. By using text materials that span diverse nationalities, stories, voices and historical periods, The Strangers’ Case aims to make a case of its own: though our commitment to immigrants and refugees has been equivocal, nonetheless their success forms the basis of American strength and renewal. As the child of an immigrant, I believe this sort of consciousness-raising is the only way forward. And as an artist, I believe that music is an ideal spark to kindle the altruism in our better natures.”