How Hong Kong debut of Aaron Zigman’s Émigré completes an emotional journey
This version of the musical, a love story between a Jewish refugee and a Chinese woman in Shanghai, has a different ending, composer says
American film composer Aaron Zigman’s musical drama Émigré, about Jewish refugees in Shanghai in the late 1930s, will make its Hong Kong debut in an updated version that its composer says will “complete” an emotional journey that began in 2019.
That was the year prominent Chinese conductor Yu Long invited Zigman, who is classically trained, and lyricists Mark Campbell and Brock Walsh to take part in the Émigré project, a joint commission by the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic.
Zigman is known for writing the music for more than 60 Hollywood films – including the 2004 box office hit The Notebook and the 2008 film version of Sex and the City – and for writing and arranging popular albums for musical legends such as Quincy Jones, Aretha Franklin and Tina Turner.
It took over three years for Zigman to complete Émigré and it only happened after he finally made his first visit to Shanghai, in 2023, amid growing Sino-US tensions. He fell in love with the city as soon as he landed, he says.
“Never in my life have I ever sat in a park and seen people at [5.30pm] dancing in a park, and in perfect synchronicity also doing tai chi,” he tells the Post. “That was the inspiration for one of the pieces in the second act that I wrote.”
Premiering in Shanghai in November 2023, followed by performances in New York and Berlin, Émigré is a love story between a Jewish man – who was among tens of thousands of Jews who fled Nazi Germany for Shanghai – and a local Chinese woman.