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Artist: Apollo Chamber Players
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Apollo Chamber Players:

Trace of Time

On Friday, August 23, 2024, Apollo Chamber Players releases their seventh album, Trace of Time, as a digital release on Azica Records. In this project featuring works by Héctor Del Curto, Julia Smith, Jessie Montgomery, Adolphus Hailstork, Astor Piazzolla and Agustín Bardi, Apollo brings together a diverse patchwork of cultural stories seen partly through the lens of how they linger in our memories as time passes. Of the seven pieces featured on the album, three were commissioned by Apollo Chamber Players with the request that each composer craft a piece reflecting their heritage – yielding an album capturing influences ranging from Argentine Tango music to West African drumming patterns and African-American spirituals. Houston-based Apollo Chamber Players, the core string quartet ensemble consisting of Matthew J. Detrick and Anabel Ramirez Detrick, violins; Aria Cheregosha, viola; and Matthew Dudzik, cello – are joined on select tracks by renowned bandoneon performer Hector Del Curto and guest violists Melissa Reardon and Ashleigh Gordon.

In Trace of Time, Apollo continues its mission of storytelling through music, celebrating diverse cultural experiences and bringing communities together. Their previous album, Moonstrike (Azica Records, 2022) was praised by Take Effect for “inestimable, multi-cultured, rhythmic chamber sounds that we could never tire of.” For this new album, the thematic and cultural ideas in the music are accented by vibrant artwork created digitally on an iPad by Houston-based artist Lynn Lane, including portraits of each featured artist and composer along with cover art depicting an Argentinian street lamp, known as a “farole.” This captivating image evokes the passage of time in one of the album’s key settings while hinting at other historical references – including the use of lamps as guidloeposts signaling freedom on the Underground Railroad.

Apollo Chamber Players:

MoonStrike

On Friday, September 2, 2022, Apollo Chamber Players, under the direction of founder and violinist Matthew J. Detrick, releases its sixth album, MoonStrike, on Azica Records. MoonStrike is a universal celebration of storytelling, space, and folk song, realized through new works by Jennifer Higdon, Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate, and Pierre Jalbert. Tate’s title work, MoonStrike, is narrated by Chickasaw astronaut John Herrington, the first American Indian citizen to fly in space. All three works were commissioned by Apollo Chamber Players as part of its 20x2020 project, launched in 2014 with a mission to commission 20 new multicultural works before the end of the last decade. The New York premiere of MoonStrike will take place on Thursday, March 9, 2023 at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall.

Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Jennifer Higdon’s In the Shadow of the Mountain (2020) is inspired by her upbringing in the Great Smoky Mountains and incorporates the sounds and colors of the region. Higdon shares, “The resonance of that area led me to choose, for my first opera, Charles Frazier’s novel Cold Mountain. The struggles of survival in Appalachia, the majesty of its natural features, and the sonorities of the mountain’s music, color the quilt of that opera and of this string quartet.”

Next is the title work, MoonStrike (2019), by Chickasaw composer and U.S. Cultural Ambassador, Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate. The work honors the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing through American Indian moon legends as narrated by Chickasaw astronaut John Herrington. Tate explains, “American Indian legends are very colorful and have a tendency to take twists and turns within the narrative. Regarding the Moon, it is very consistent that the traditional tales involve trickster characters and competitions for ownership of this precious object.” MoonStrike features three diverse American Indian legends, and is bookended with an arrangement of a Calusa Corn Dance. MoonStrike also draws inspiration from Apollo Founder Matthew J. Detrick’s love of space and childhood dream to become the first person to play the violin in space.

Apollo Chamber Players:

Malice Toward None

The Apollo Chamber Players have released their fifth studio album, With Malice Toward None, on Azica Records. The album is a breathtaking collection of globally-inspired compositions and collaborations, with each composer sharing their own personal interpretations of folk music. Works include a title track by Vietnam War-veteran J. Kimo Williams with a performance by electric violinist Tracy Silverman, Pamela Z's The Unraveling, What is the Word? by Christopher Theofanidis and Mark Wingate, new arrangements of a trio of Armenian folk songs by pioneering Armenian composer Komitas, and Eve Beglarian's We Will Sing One Song for duduk, string quartet, percussion, and track. The Pamela Z, Theofanidis and Wingate, and Beglarian pieces are part of Apollo's 20x2020 project, launched in 2014 with a mission to commission 20 new multicultural works before the end of the decade.

In J. Kimo Williams' With Malice Toward None (2020), the composer speaks to the current social and cultural climate we face, taking inspiration from Beethoven, who wished that musical expression could affect change. When asked for her interpretation of folk music, Pamela Z drew from the American folk and rock music from the 1960s and 1970s that resonated with her since childhood to create The Unraveling (2019). Christopher Theofanidis and Mark Wingate's What is the Word? (2017) is based on Samuel Beckett's poem of the same name, which was written in response to his own late encounter with aphasia. Armenian ethnomusicologist and composer Komitas created a renaissance in Armenian music, collecting and transcribing over 3,000 pieces of Armenian folk music during his life. Eve Beglarian began creating We Will Sing One Song (2020) while reading The Human Comedy by Armenian-American writer William Saroyan.