Ellis Island: The Dream of America
Ellis Island: The Dream of America is a work for actors and orchestra with projected images by American composer Peter Boyer, composed in 2001-02, commissioned by the Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts in Hartford, Connecticut. The work combines first-person narrations of seven immigrants who entered the United States through Ellis Island between 1910 and 1940, selected by Boyer from the Ellis Island Oral History Project, with Boyer’s original orchestral music. The work has received over 170 performances by more than 75 orchestras. A recording of the work released on the Naxos record label was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Classical Contemporary Composition in the 48th annual Grammy Awards. In April 2017, performances by Pacific Symphony of "Ellis Island: The Dream of America" were filmed for broadcast on PBS’ "Great Performances" series in the 2017-18 broadcast season.
Emory Ellis
Ellis was born on 29 October 1906 in Grayville, Illinois. He attended California Institute of Technology from 1925, attaining his PhD in 1934 in biochemistry. Apart from one year working for the Food and Drug Administration, Ellis remained at Caltech until World War II. Ellis' interests were in bacteriophage which he believed would contribute to understanding the role of viruses in cancer. He started work on their role in animals, but found that there were extra problems and expense related to maintaining the animals and so switched to phage. Ellis published the important paper "The Growth of Bacteriophage" with Max Delbrück in 1939. He gave up work on phage after this paper and returned to cancer research before moving to Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake from 1943, working with rocket-program employees as the onsite representative of Caltech. Ellis became Executive Director of the Office of Industrial Associates in Caltech for two years between 1963 and 1965 and retired in 1969. Ellis died on 26 October 2003.