Matthew J Detrick

This is another repeat conversation for Harmonious World, as musicians around the world continue to produce exciting new music.  My guest for the first episode of 2023 is violinist Matthew J Detrick, who is discussing his project Apollo Chamber Players.

The latest album from Apollo Chamber Players is Moonstrike, featuring music composed by Jennifer Higdon, Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate and Pierre Jalbert. You can hear my previous conversation with Matthew in episode 82 and with Jerod in episode 68.

Thanks to Matthew for allowing me to play extracts from Moonstrike alongside our conversation.

Thank you for listening to Harmonious World. Please rate, review and share: click on the link and subscribe to support the show.

Don't forget the Quincy Jones quote that sums up why I do this: "Imagine what a harmonious world it would be if every single person, both young and old, shared a little of what he is good at doing."

Transcript

Hilary 0:31

Hello, my name is Hilary Seabrook. Welcome to the latest episode of Harmonious World. For this episode, I'm joined by Matthew Dietrich, who is the founder of Apollo Chamber Players. I first interviewed Matthew a year ago, and I'm delighted that he's joining me again. Moonstrike is out now on Azika Records, and the New York premiere of Moonstrike takes place in March 2023 at Carnegie Hall's Vile Recyclable. Moonstrike features works by Jennifer Higdon, Gerard Tate, and Pierre Jalbert. I interviewed Jared also last year. So you can listen back to that interview as well to find out more about his music and about Apollo Chamber players. Apollo delights in new music and has commissioned several pieces for the string quartet. What you're listening to now is an extract from Jennifer Higdon's In the Shadow of the Mountain. Apollo was founded in 2008 by Matthew, who I'm going to be talking to shortly, about the quartet, the album, and how he's getting on now we're really coming out of lockdown. Thank you for joining me, Matthew Dietrich from Apollo Chamber Players.

Matthew 2:18

It's a pleasure to be with you, Hillary.

Hilary 2:20

So you have Moonstrike out now.

Matthew 2:23

Moonstrike is our sixth commercial album. We're very proud of this. I think it really just tells the story, the heritages of these wonderful composers that are featured on this disc, Jared Imputchaha Tate, whom you know and have interviewed Jennifer Higdon, fantastic composer who I think has her finger on how music is evolving in today's society. And then Pierre Jalbert, a wonderful composer based uh here in Houston, Texas, faculty composer at Rice University, who happened to be my professor, and and now he's a colleague and one of our uh wonderful commissioned composers. So um it's a it's a really fun disc. There's a lot of storytelling here and representation, like I said, of the composer's heritage and Jared's taste with a case with Moonstrike, thousands of years of American Indian Indian history.

Hilary 3:12

Yeah, and and he is such an interesting guy, and his music is so wonderful. So I've really enjoyed this album.

Matthew 3:21

Thank you. And of course, we can't leave out the wonderful narrator guest, astronaut John Harrington, um, who landed his voice and his uh dramatic um mystique uh to the to the narration of the moon legends.

Hilary 3:38

Yeah, and I I've always found this fascinating, the fact that there's something so historic, and yet it feels also very new and almost future as well, exciting. So there's something something, there's that balance, that blend of things going on, which is exciting.

Matthew 3:58

And initially this was a way to honor the 50th anniversary of the Apollo lunar landing in 2019. Um, seems like a long time ago. We've all been through a lot with the pandemic, but um, at that time, you know, it was celebrating the anniversary. And when I was thinking about ideas for for this, you know, for for our season, it just gelled, and there was so much synchronicity between American Indian legends and moon legends and and and the space program. Um, and of course, Apollo Chamber players were inspired partially by the city in which we live, Space City, Houston, Texas. So it was a wonderful marriage of all these uh different strands of ideas and elements.

Hilary 4:42

Yeah, and and and beautiful music as well. Yes, you can't forget that, and I love the the the string quartet um format that you use, and it's but it's you explore every nuance and every combination and the way the melodies go in between, you know, all of these things, it's just beautiful.

Matthew 5:07

Thank you, and and it's wonderful to perform as well. Uh you know, Moonstrike, it's kind of interesting too because when we put it together for the album, John Harrington did well, we did the premiere in 2019 here in Houston, and then the pandemic happened. We recorded our string quartet uh parts the summer of 2020, and then John recorded his narration uh in in Montana where he lives. And uh so then Alan Bice of Azika Records stitched that all together, and I think it was really wonderful. But what's really wonderful about this kind of piece in particular is that it's different live every single time we do it. Uh, it's more dramatic in some sense for for for a certain certain part of the story. Um, and then we respond to that in real time. So it's it's it we're making music with him in a in a different way, even though using his narrative, he's telling the tales, weaving the tales, if you will.

Hilary 6:00

Yeah, absolutely. No, it's fantastic. Um, and one of the things that I really like about Apollo is the way that you have commissioned lots of new music, and this is very much reinventing the string quartet all the time.

Matthew 6:16

Yes, I thank you for saying that. That's that's our our mission is to connect communities and cultures to globally inspired music. So, with that as our backdrop, that inspires every composer that we approach for a new piece. And uh, you know, I feel like Apollo, we're in the business of blurring boundaries between different genres and art forms as we evolve what you know, whatever classical music is now and will be in the future.

Hilary 6:41

Yeah.

Matthew 6:41

Um so that's yeah, that that's exactly what we aim to do.

Hilary 6:46

Yeah, very good.

Matthew 6:48

And then also, you know, connecting with Houston. We've talked about this before, uh, possibly Hillary, but a lot of people don't realize that uh Houston, Texas is one of the most culturally diverse cities on the planet, even more so than New York in some sense. So this this is the the the backdrop, the palette from which we program and commission new works.

Hilary 7:07

Yeah, which is stunning, isn't it? It's so amazing in the world in which we live to be doing something where you are actively embracing diversity, you're not just kind of apologizing for it.

Matthew 7:20

Or we're not also sticking it in as sort of a placeholder in a concert of you know, of the greats. I mean, we love playing Beethoven, and we just did a concert of band music works last weekend with a Afghani rhubarb performer and uh new commission that will come out in a couple of years on on a on an album. But we also mix that with Prokofiev, his first drink quartet, and you know, it keeps us nimble, it keeps us you know playing really difficult repertoire. Yeah, but I think also you know, we we look at what's going on now, and if there's a connection to the past, which there usually is, then we bring that into the into the program as a whole. So it's kind of a holistic approach.

Hilary 7:59

At the start of this podcast, I'm playing the Jennifer Higdon part of that in the shadow of the mountain, which is inspired by Cold Mountain. Is that right?

Matthew 8:11

The the book that's correct. Uh well, it's it's loosely based on her opera as well. So it has shares some of the same DNA, and what she did is she used some of those elements and strands from the opera to create this string quartet. So it was very interesting for her to come from like a macro sense and then bring it to a micro sense of a string quartet. And I think it works wonderfully too, because you know, obviously, like you said, the string quartet it is such a personal medium, and so I feel like the piece has an even more emotive quality. Uh, and in some sense, it's more challenging technically for us to play because of the fact that she, you know, it came from something larger. Um, so it's it's a wonderful piece. Like I said, like I mentioned before, I think Jennifer really has her finger on how people listen to music these days and how and how our sense of music is evolving. The piece is 16 minutes long and it also is evocative, as you said, of where she grew up in the Appalachian Mountains. There's some stormy elements, there's a storm scene, there's also you know some very heartfelt scenes um in the beginning, uh, you know, towards the beginning and then and then the end. And then also there's some really wonderful kind of juxtapositions of color uh and and kind of mountain mistiness that she uh evokes in our string quartet instruments.

Hilary 9:31

Yeah. And I'm gonna finish the podcast with some of Moonstrike because that's Gerard Tates, and that's the the sort of almost raison d'etre of the of the album. But but at this point in the middle, I'd like to play play an extract from Pierre Jalbert's L'Esprit du Nord, Spirit of the North. What was his brief?

Matthew 11:17

My brief to him and it to most composers is we have a little bit of a you know a German idea. Uh and I find that it's very helpful to ask a composer um about their about their heritage. Would they like to be to write something inspired by their heritage? In the case of Pierre, he had never really done that. He's French Canadian, and uh he was born in the States, but his parents um were born in Quebec. So he shared, you know, he that's a very important part of his of who he is, and he's never explored that in music before. So this was kind of a challenge for him. He actually did some field research in Quebec, uh, I think the summer of 2018, and found these really wonderful French field recordings um that he he he integrates into the commission, actually. And you know, I think I think it's very it's very fascinating too. And the first movement, I'm not sure what you're going to play here, Hillary, but the first movement is a theme in variations, and I thought that was just a perfect choice to kind of extract, you know, play play the the original field recording and then kind of extract different um elements from that in his own musical language. And then then, of course, the the second movement is based on this religious hymn. It's very uh very heartfelt, and then the last movement is kind of a jubilant uh folk dance and fiddle dance, and that's something that I'm very familiar with. I grew up with my family, we did programs. My my father's a uh uh a minister and a guitar player, he did the folk side, the coach class music, and then my mother um was the classical side of the uh the first class music, if you will, with violin, and then I have two younger brothers, and we would do programs all the time, mixing hymns and and spirituals and classical music, Bach and Beethoven and Mozart, and also fiddle music, right? So it was just it was I I yeah, I didn't even give him that charge, but he came back, he brought this piece back to us, and it was just uh kind of a wonderful kind of uh coming home for me as a what as well. Um, some elements of my of my childhood.

Hilary 13:12

Yeah, I love the fiddle dance, and I think that might be what I play at this point. Okay, yeah, that's pretty yeah, then but yeah, brilliant. Okay, so and obviously I'm gonna finish with an extract from Moonstrike. I can't play the whole thing, but just just a bit of it. What do you think is the piece? Because I it's a it's a collection of of pieces that fit together. What do you think is the the single piece that sums up perhaps Jared's intention?

Matthew 13:47

I think the man, the the Mary the Moon, the second movement is kind of the the heart of the the the commission. I mean it's it begins with um you know the prologue and epilogue. I have uh this Calusa corn dance that's uh I can't I think sets up things well and finishes finishes things well, like bookends the uh the piece. Um, and then the middle movement, uh The Man Who Married the Moon, I think I you know it's a very evocative story, and the way Jared uses um text painting, I think is very fascinating to kind of elucidate and describe what's going on in the story in a way that you know is I I think is also evocative of kind of what Prokofio does with Peter, Peter and the Wolf. I mean, you know, one of the one of the special things I think about this commission is that there's not a lot in that space at all for string quartet and narrator. So, you know, as we expand and the pe people more people get to know the know know the piece, um, you know, I think it would it works just as well for children and families as it does for you know an audience in Carnegie Hall, which we'll be performing uh March 9th in Carnegie Hall. Um, our our Moonstrike Commission, actually, everything from this disc. So we're really looking forward to uh that that um bringing this to the national stage, international stage uh at Carnegie Hall.

Hilary 15:09

Absolutely. Carnegie Hall, I mean this is huge. So that's that's amazing. Uh it's wonderful, and it's gonna be a great concert and a great collection of these pieces. But thank you very much for joining me once again, Matthew.

Matthew 15:24

That's my pleasure, Hilary, and thank you for what you do and bringing bringing our music and and others' music to the to the world.

Hilary 15:31

So yeah. Thank you so much, Matthew. It's really good to talk to you.

Matthew 15:36

You're welcome.

Hilary 15:40

Thank you for joining me once more for Harmonious World. What you're listening to now is the first movement of Gerard Tate's Moonstrike, his origin of the moon. I hope this finds you well, and look forward to speaking to you again soon.

Narrator 16:02

Long ago, when the world was very young, the moon was a plaything of the animal tribe of people. One day, Caoti spoke up loudly to Antelope. Let our sons go out and learn how to steal the moon. When the eight young sons reached the open space where the animal people were rolling the great round shining ball, they hid themselves at one end of the playfield. The animal people knew that the boys were coming to steal it. They rolled it towards the boys, certain that it was too heavy for anyone to take away. But the coyote brothers, one at a time, rolled it home. The owners of the moon caught up with the coyote brothers and killed them, one at a time. Then the Antelope brothers took the moon from the youngest coyote and ran so swiftly no one could catch them. When they reached home and told Coyote that his sons had been killed, Coyote cried loudly.