Ghost Ship Symphony Honors 36 Artists Who Died in 2016 Warehouse Fire

The impacts of the Ghost Ship fire on Dec. 2, 2016, when an East Oakland warehouse went up in flames during an electronic music show, continue to reverberate through the Bay Area’s creative scenes. The fire claimed the lives of 36 people, aged 20 to 61, most of whom were artists and musicians.

Alexandrea Archuleta was slated to perform that night. Working the door when the fire broke out, she managed to escape with her life. Now, she’s uplifting the memories of friends she lost and creating a space for healing with a new symphonic work, Symphony No. 1 …And No One Died, Thus We Began to See in the Dark, which she’ll perform with a new ensemble called Ghost Ship Symphony on Nov. 15 at Bandaloop in West Oakland.

Archuleta conceptualized the uplifting, cathartic piece as a love letter, not only to the 36 victims but to the many friends who worked together to support her and other survivors, whether through meals, medicinal herbs, fundraising or just some friendly company.

“The radical love of people in the Bay Area is the other side of this,” she says.

After the fire, the house she shared with roommate and fellow musician Sharmi Basu became a hub for mutual aid during the depths of the community’s mourning. “We needed to get people money because people were too sick from grief to work,” Basu says, noting that many artists also lost housing as the City of Oakland cracked down on unpermitted live-work warehouses.

Basu is now the executive director of the organization for Vital Arts, an artist advocacy organization founded by Edwin Bernbaum, whose son, visual projection artist Jonathan, was killed in the fire.

Building on the spirit of DIY mutual aid, Vital Arts leads several programs, including a paid fellowship and free legal cafes, that work to address artists’ material needs in the expensive Bay Area. As many advocates have pointed out over the years, the untenable cost of living and lack of available creative spaces is what pushed people to live and perform in unsafe venues like Ghost Ship.

At the Ghost Ship Symphony concert, which includes a performance from dance collective RUPTURE, Vital Arts will announce its new cohort of Bay Area Artist Census fellows, who over the next 18 months will survey the creative community about its needs for housing, healthcare and fair wages, and advocate for solutions. The organization also just opened applications for the latest round of its Artist Displacement Prevention Grant, which pays $3,000 to support artists facing housing insecurity.

“I think as artists, our job is to remind each other of life and give each other hope,” Basu says.

To that end, Basu has been working with Archuleta to find classical musicians to complete the Ghost Ship Symphony ensemble. The Nov. 15 show will serve as a work-in-progress preview of a large-scale orchestral performance next year, to mark the 10th anniversary of the tragedy on Dec. 4, 2026 at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.

Archuleta came up as an electronic musician. As she processed her grief over the past nine years, the works of Italian film composer Ennio Morricone and minimalist Estonian composer Arvo Pärt became a balm and a guiding light. She’s collaborating with arranger Franklin Cole, who’s based in her hometown of Denver, Colorado, to translate her composition into a sweeping epic propelled by horns and timpani.

The piece is part of a growing canon of contemporary classical works dedicated to the Ghost Ship victims, including Richard Marriott’s Ghost Ship Concerto, which debuted in 2018 with the Oakland Symphony, and Arturo Rodriguez’ Requiem Sinfónica, performed in full with members of Awesöme Orchestra in 2022.

Archuleta’s Symphony No. 1 …And No One Died and We Began to See in the Dark will be the first time such a project has been led by a survivor. She envisions the music not as a “bummer or downer,” but as a greeting to her friends in the afterlife. Over the years, she says, she’s arrived at a more accepting attitude towards death.

“It’s this long eternal forever, and it’s this beautiful place, and it’s this comforting place,” she says. “It’s not as heart-wrenching or as darksided as I think the West kind of tends to view it.”

Alexandrea Archuleta and Ghost Ship Symphony perform a preview of ‘Symphony No. 1 …And No One Died and We Began to See in the Dark’ at Bandaloop (1601 18th St., Oakland) on Nov. 15 at 7 p.m. The evening will feature a dance performance by the collective RUPTURE.