The Seattle Symphony marks the 80th anniversary of Executive Order 9066 with a week-long digital broadcast of the EO9066 program on Seattle Symphony Live. Issued on February 19, 1942, Executive Order 9066 authorized the resettlement and incarceration of more than 100,000 innocent Japanese American citizens during World War II.
Over the course of several months, Japanese American men, women and children were taken from their homes and held in internment camps without due process. The executive order indelibly changed their lives and the history of the Puget Sound area, with many lingering effects still felt today.
The EO9066 program will be available to stream on Seattle Symphony Live for one week, beginning Thursday, February 17 and running through February 24. On February 19, the 80th anniversary of Executive Order 9066, the performance will be available to stream for free. In this powerful concert, the orchestra presents two works inspired by the Executive Decree – first, the world premiere of Beyond the Hills by Paul Chihara, commissioned by the Seattle Symphony Orchestra; then the musicians are joined on stage by Kishi Bashi, born in Seattle, for his own Improvisations on EO9066; Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4 completes the program.
Alongside Symphony’s EO9066 concert is “Pictures of Executive Order 9066”, a 10-minute self-guided multimedia experience created especially for the immersive screens of Octave 9: Raisbeck Music Center. The exhibition is a collaboration between award-winning filmmaker JJ Gerber and singer, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Kishi Bashi and will be available February 19 for a final day. “Pictures of Executive Order 9066” includes photographic documentation of the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II by seminal photographer Dorothea Lange and oral histories provided by Densho.
For information on tickets to the multimedia exhibit, “Pictures of Executive Order 9066”, please visit www.seattlesymphony.org or contact the Seattle Symphony Ticket Office.
