Riverside Art Museum Presents THE PEOPLE OF THE TAGS

Riverside Art Museum Artist in Residence, Master storyteller Brenda Wong Aoki, and Emmy award winning composer Mark Izu, will conclude their 2018 Residency with a final performance, The People of the Tags, a work interacting with the Wendy Maruyama: E.O. 9066 exhibition on Saturday, March 17th at 1pm at the Riverside Art Museum, 3425 Mission Inn Avenue, Riverside, CA 92501. Admission is Pay What You Wish. For more information visit click here or call 951.684.7111.

The events and circumstances that led to the Japanese Prison Camps in the 1940's are strikingly similar to what is happening today. Every man, woman and child incarcerated were forced to wear a tag with a name and a number. Made of these tags, Wendy Maruyama's hanging sculptures bear silent witness.

Brenda's stories will give dramatic testimony to the real people behind these tags. Stories she has gathered, in her 42 years as a teller in the hinterlands of America; acts of bravery and human decency that can teach us strategies for navigating the turbulence of today.

"In the polyglot of cultures that is America today, our children marry each other," said Brenda Wong Aoki. "These beautiful rainbow children unknowingly inherit unresolved trauma. Our descendants are all children of the tags. But if you know your past, together we can change our future."

Attendees are encouraged to bring photos of people and loved ones who were incarcerated in the Japanese Prison Camps. By telling their story in public forum, Brenda and Mark can transform their shame into honor.

For more information visit www.riversideartmuseum.org/

"Mark Izu's music is a great gift to the jazz tradition, to its ongoing transformation and revitalization into energetic and unpredictable new directions" - Downbeat Magazine

" Aoki encompasses the comic and the tragic with fine, quick, delicate gestures, using everything from her expressive hands and face to her long sweeping black hair...making relevant and magical even the most faraway tales." - Los Angeles Times, Critic's Choice

Since 1976 Brenda Wong Aoki and Mark Izu have, together and separately created multi-disciplinary work that has received national and international acclaim. They founded First Voice in 1997, with a mission to create, present and contribute the stories and music of people living between worlds. Critical to this mission is "personal experience" or "voice" - essential to the authentic representation of the people of the United States.

First Voice was founded in 1997 to provide an organizational structure for their collaborations, which center on the creation of contemporary American art by working in and adapting non-Western theatrical, musical, and spoken word traditions. First Voice looks for symbols, parables, and shared intent between people that can be woven together to create universal understanding.

Aoki and Izu's work has garnered Emmy Awards, Hollywood Dramalogue Awards, Critic Circle Awards, Indie Awards, Goldies, Certificates of Merit from the California State Legislature, City of San Francisco, Board of Supervisors and commissions from U.S. Congress, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Japanese Department of Cultural Affairs, the Asian Arts Council, the Rockefeller Foundation, the U.S. Japan Friendship, Meet-the-Composer, the Gerbode Foundation, the Dramatist Guild and the American Association of Authors, Composers and Publishers (ASCAP).

Throughout the organization's history, First Voice has produced, presented, toured, published, and recorded original work that is rooted in Asian theatre & music (particularly Japanese Nohgaku and Gagaku) and nurtured in American cultural art forms like jazz, spoken word and contemporary theater. This original work includes: symphonic works, plays, storytelling, jazz ensemble, chamber music, large scale pageant performances with traditional and contemporary dancers, solo monodramas, live performance of all genres & performance with film. First Voice collaborates not only across disciplines but also across cultures. Full-length main stage performances usually revolve around issues of place, home, family and survival. Collaborations include artists from Japan, Aunt Lily's Flowerbook (2017), MU, (2013), Legend of Morning Glory (2008), Hong Kong - Kuan-Yin: Our Lady of Compassion (2002), Hawaii treasure Keola Beamer - Ghost Festival I (2001), Basque musician Kepa Junpera (2010), Karuk Tribal elders Julian Lang and Lyn Risling - Hibakusha (1995), musicians and storytellers from the Cherokee nation - Fire in Heaven (2003), Afro-Peruvian, Mayan, Indian & Korean dancers - Return of the Sun (2009) classical conductor, Kent Nagano, Opera Lyon and the Berkeley Symphony - Mermaid (1997) and African-American civil rights poet & actor John O'Neal - Ballad of the Bones (1999). The work is premiered in Aoki and Izu's home base in San Francisco and then presented internationally. www.firstvoice.org

Photo courtesy of First Voice

To post a comment, you must register and login.