On Friday, Sept. 11, Blair School of Music faculty members David Samuel, Dashon Burton and Sun-A Park will present the world premiere of The Ghosts of Chinatown, a new work that uses music and visual storytelling to illuminate one of the deadliest and most often overlooked acts of racial violence in American history.
Composed by Daixuan Ai with an original libretto by Dennis Yueh-Yeh Li, The Ghosts of Chinatown was commissioned by David Samuel with support from the Peter and Lois Fyfe Faculty Fellowship. The work commemorates the victims of the Chinese massacre of 1871 in Los Angeles, when a mob attacked residents of the city’s Chinese community on Oct. 24, killing at least 18 people. The violence claimed a significant portion of Los Angeles’ small Chinese population at the time and remains a little-known episode in the city’s history.
Written for the intimate combination of bass-baritone, viola and piano, The Ghosts of Chinatown brings Li’s libretto together with Ai’s music to give voice to a history that for generations received little public recognition. The work imagines a photographer documenting old Los Angeles whose images unexpectedly capture the wandering ghosts of three people killed in the massacre. Through the photographer, the ghosts emerge to tell their individual stories, allowing a single singer to embody multiple characters.
Samuel sees the project as an opportunity to explore the role musicians can play not only as performers, but also as storytellers and interpreters of history.
“I met Daixuan a little over two years ago after premiering one of her works in California, and was drawn to her creativity, humanity, and gift for telling stories through music,” Samuel said. “This piece puts all of that on full display. The tragic story we will be telling is too often forgotten, despite how much it can teach us. We premiere it on the 25th anniversary of a modern-day tragedy many of us lived through, and the echoes between the two are heartbreaking. I am grateful to Dashon and Sun-A for bringing such humanity and artistry to this work.”
For Ai, the project grew from a desire to explore lesser-known chapters of Chinese American history.
“David and I had a chat with novelist Lisa See, who told us about LA’s ongoing project to build a new memorial for the 1871 Chinese massacre, which the city hopes to unveil ahead of the 2028 LA Olympics,” said Ai. “I had never heard of the massacre, despite it being one of the deadliest racially motivated killings in American history, wiping out 10% of the city’s Chinese population at the time. David and I both felt the story was incredibly compelling, and that this was the right moment to bring it back to light as the new memorial is being built.”
The world premiere will extend beyond the music itself. A visual installation of historical photographs, documents and contemporary newspaper accounts will accompany the performance, giving audiences a window into Los Angeles in 1871 and the Chinese immigrant community that became the target of the violence.
The combination of live performance and archival material is intended to create an experience in which the historical record and contemporary artistic expression inform one another, bringing audiences closer to the individuals and community behind the events.
“My hope in sharing a few historical images and documents is to deepen the audience’s experience and connect this work to lived history,” said Samuel. “I’ve also partnered with The Asian American Advocacy Project (TAAAP), an on-campus student-run organization, on a companion visual element highlighting their ongoing research into various Asian American historical events in the US South. Collaborating with these students has been a joy; their passion and enthusiasm are inspiring.”
For audiences, The Ghosts of Chinatown offers both a world premiere and an encounter with a chapter of American history rarely represented on the concert stage. Through music, words, historical images and documents, the performance seeks to remember lives lost more than 150 years ago while asking what it means to recover stories that have faded from public memory.
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The Ghosts of Chinatown
Featuring David Samuel, viola; Dashon Burton, bass-baritone; and Sun-A Park, piano
Friday, September 11, 2026, 7:30 p.m.
Turner Recital Hall at Vanderbilt University Blair School of Music
Tickets: $18.50 | BlairTickets.com
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About The Ghosts of Chinatown: Composer Daixuan Ai on the work
Composer Daixuan Ai shares additional insight into the origins of The Ghosts of Chinatown, her collaboration with David Samuel and the Blair School of Music, and what she hopes audiences will take from the premiere.
Inspiration for The Ghosts of Chinatown
I’ve been wanting to tell the forgotten history of Chinese Americans for a long time. There are so many aspects of their journey we don’t know about and don’t learn in history books, and as someone who came to this country ten years ago, I’m fascinated by their stories and feel indebted to them, since they paved the way for many generations to come. Initially I wanted to tell the story of the Chinese railroad workers who were banned from the celebration ceremony when the transcontinental railroad was completed — that’s the more well-known chapter of Chinese American history. Then David and I had a chat with novelist Lisa See, who told us about LA’s ongoing project to build a new memorial for the 1871 Chinese massacre, which the city hopes to unveil ahead of the 2028 LA Olympics. I had never heard of the massacre, despite it being one of the deadliest racially motivated killings in American history, wiping out 10% of the city’s Chinese population at the time. David and I both felt the story was incredibly compelling, and that this was the right moment to bring it back to light as the new memorial is being built.
We worked with Dennis Yueh-Yeh Li — a playwright affiliated with the Museum of Chinese in America in New York City — to create a brand-new libretto and song cycle based on the stories of three people killed during the massacre. The biggest question we faced at the outset was how to tell these three people’s stories, through their own eyes, without making the singer’s role race-specific. It’s true this was a Chinese American massacre, but the story of senseless hatred and violence is relatable to every group, every person. Dennis had the brilliant idea of framing the singer as a photographer capturing images of old LA, whose photographs of the soon-to-be-demolished Chinatown accidentally catch the wandering ghosts of those who died in the massacre — playing into the old belief that when cameras were first invented, they were thought capable of capturing souls. The photographer then lets the ghosts sing and tell their stories through him, effectively embodying multiple characters even though there’s only one singer onstage — like a one-man opera.
Collaboration with David Samuel and Vanderbilt
I feel so honored and lucky to have worked with David, Vanderbilt University, and the other wonderful musicians at Blair on this project. Working with David has been a blast — I don’t think I would ever have written for this specific ensemble (viola, voice, and piano) had he not commissioned me to do so. Could the story have been told with a different combination of instruments? Sure. But what makes this piece so compelling is that David has been an integral part of it from the research stage all the way through realizing the music on paper. In the end, the work turned out to be perfectly tailored for this ensemble, and I can’t imagine having written it for anything else — not only because it was written with specific musicians in mind, but because David has been part of it since the idea’s conception.
Historical images and exhibition materials
I sent David historic photographs related to the massacre and LA’s Chinatown whenever I came across them during my research, but the exhibition itself was prepared entirely by Vanderbilt students. That’s actually part of why I’m glad the premiere is happening in Nashville rather than LA — the students have been researching Asian American history in their own local community to make the exhibition more relevant, which I think is so important, since Asian Americans’ footprints here are far less studied than their roots on the West and East Coasts. I hope this project can also serve as a launching point for further study — for myself and others — of Asian American history in the South.
Hopes for the audience experience
I want the audience not only to learn this overlooked history but to feel moved by the stories of the three ghosts. They were not nameless, insignificant immigrants whose lives made no impact — they had dreams and regrets, they worked hard, and they contributed to their community. I hope this concert inspires people to dig deeper into this story, and into the many other forgotten pieces of American history, and to come to see the people in those stories as individuals who suffered, fought, dreamed, dared, loved, and lived their limited lives to the fullest until the very end — rather than as nameless victims whose lives and deaths were deemed irrelevant to the land they called home.
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