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Stories   >   Listen to Apollo Chamber Players 'The Unravelling' with Pamela Z and Matthew Detrick

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Listen to Apollo Chamber Players 'The Unravelling' with Pamela Z and Matthew Detrick

Posted: August 22, 2022
‘The Unravelling’ with Pamela Z and Apollo Chamber Players — Matthew Detrick

In 2021, through Azica Records, the innovative Houston Texas based, Apollo Chamber Players released 'With Malice Toward None.' Taking its title from Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address, the recording deals with politics, identity, and what it means to be a citizen of a nation balanced between an idealized past and a just future. Featured on this recording is a unique work by composer/performer Pamela Z titled: ‘The Unraveling.’

Pamela Z composes for voice, electronic processing, samples, gesture activated MIDI controllers, and video. She’s toured throughout the US, Europe, and Japan, presenting her work at New York’s ‘Bang on a Can,’ Festival ‘The Japan Interlink Festival,’ San Francisco’s ‘Other Minds,’ the Venice and Dakar Biennales, among other venues and exhibitions. With a body of scores written for dance, film, and chamber ensembles, Pamela Z has collaborated with the Kronos Quartet, Eighth Blackbird, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s among others, and she’s received awards from the Guggenheim and Robert Rauschenberg Foundations, United States Artists, and is a recipient of the Rome Prize, Doris Duke Artist Impact Award, and the Herb Alpert Award. Pamela Z is here with us along with Apollo Chamber Players violinist and founder Matthew Detrick to discuss her piece ‘The Unravelling’ and the intersection of classical and folk music.  LISTEN

With all the mixing and blurring of genre boundaries, we start our conversation discussing the question…  What is classical music in the 21st century. Is there a 'right' and authentic way to combine genres, and will the cultural moment that we're currently living in be long-lasting or ephemeral?

Many classically trained musicians and composers want to be involved in music outside of notated concert music because these musicians love different kinds of music.

In creating ‘The Unraveling,’ Pamela Z drew from American folk and rock music from the 1960s and 70s. This is a sound that has resonated with her since childhood.  From a young age the first songs she learned were by Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, and Malvina Reynolds, and her first compositions were in that singer/songwriter style. She was particularly drawn to protest songs.

The Apollo Chamber Players did an entire season centered around the question, ‘what folk music means’ and how different composers and people generally define folk music, and 'With Malice Toward None' is at its core focused on folk music. In this particular commission Apollo is asking this question of  Pamela. Of course, folk music is a key the basis for popular music and folk music lends itself very well  to a string quartet configuration. 

The podcast goes over each of the four movements 
In the first section ‘Joni’ Pamela Z uses the string quartet as a human sampling and playback device creating their phrases and motifs from cut up, layered, and looped fragments taken from the dulcimer part in Joni Mitchell's ‘All I Want’ from her Blue album.  

The second section, ‘Lord I’m One’ is a kind of ‘broken record' riff on the old folk standard made popular by Peter, Paul, and Mary “500 Miles,”

The third section, ‘Travis’ is a lesson in a common finger-picking style.

The final section, ‘Microbus’ is a wistful reminiscence of Pamela Z's busking days in San Francisco, where she eventually relocated.

We also ask Apollo Chamber Players violinist and founder Matthew Detrick to discuss from the performer's perspective, what its like to be immersed in the 'sound world' that Pamela Z creates.

Produced by Max Horowitz — Crossover Media, This content, as well as the related podcast, are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) for redistribution and adaptation.