Exploring 'Ban: Stories of Censorship' with Matthew Detrick from Apollo Chamber Players

Welcome to the latest episode of Harmonious World, in which I interview musicians about how their music helps make the world more harmonious.

This is my third episode chatting with Matthew Detrick, one of the founding musicians of Apollo Chamber Players. You can listen to our earlier episodes from November 2021 and January 2023 to find out more about the work the ensemble is doing, especially in commissioning new work.

For this episode, we're discussing Ban: Stories of Censorship, which includes The Book of Names by Marty Regan, which includes narration by George Takei, who is so much more than the actor who portrayed Mr Sulu in Star Trek. You will find out why during our conversation.

The discussions around censorship and this fascinating music were particularly interesting as I have just finished reading James, by Percival Everett, which is a brilliant version of Huckleberry Finn. I can heartily recommend the book as well as this album. 

Thanks to Matthew and the other members of Apollo Chamber Players for allowing me to use tracks from Ban: Stories of Censorship 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 0:22

Hello, and welcome to the latest episode of Harmonious World. My name is Hilary Seabrook, and Harmonious World is based on a Quincy Jones quote that goes something like: Imagine what a harmonious world it would be if every one of us shared a little of what we're good at. What I do on Harmonious World is I chat with musicians, uh composers, conductors, venues, all sorts of people about what they're doing that makes the world a little more harmonious. And in fact, this episode is a particularly apposite one in that respect. Because Apollo Chamber players have a new album out called Ban, Stories of Censorship, came out at the end of August, and it features some incredible music, but also with a great concept behind it talking about censorship from a modern perspective. So I'm about to chat with Matthew Dietrich for the third time. I spoke to him in January 2023 and November 2021. I will put links to those episodes in the show notes. What you're listening to now is the album's title work, Ban, which includes a flute, a piccolo, a stomp box, alongside the string quartet. There are some fantastic pieces on this album, and I'm really looking forward to chatting with Matthew about them. I hope you enjoy listening to our conversation. Good afternoon from here. Yeah, everything's really good, thank you. Very busy and it's going really well.

Matthew 2:11

I enjoy listening to your podcast. You're doing a wonderful job. Is this no uh do you know what number this is for you?

Hilary 2:17

Uh it's 300, right? Yeah, we're getting close to 300 now.

Matthew 2:21

Okay, awesome.

Hilary 2:25

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for joining me for this episode. And obviously, this is our third chat, Matthew.

Matthew 2:33

It is. Thank you for having me, Hillary. It's it's uh very much appreciated, and uh we love your work, so thank you.

Hilary 2:39

Brilliant. Well, uh, obviously, we spoke back in 2023 and 2021, and I'm assuming that this project must have been starting a couple of years ago because it sounds like a huge endeavor.

Matthew 2:55

Uh yeah, and in a lot of ways it was. And I know we talked about our I think it was our With Malice Toward None album with you and our Trace of Time. I actually think it was Moonstrike. Um I feel like this album may be our Magnum opus in many ways, and I say that as graciously as I as I can and humbly as I can, um, and unfortunately as I can too. One of the common allies, I think, with your your work and your podcast, Harmonious World, we're all working for greater cultural harmony, right? Our Apollo's mission is to create cultural harmony through musical exploration. And you know, this this album, we've been leaning even more on that idea of cultural harmony. How do we create cultural harmony? There's no way to get to attain cultural harmony without first pushing against uh back against those forces of um being the resistance against those that are you know promoting values that are antithetical to democracy, to decency, and to compassion and empathy and human rights. So this album centered around censorship and um book banning and having George Decay, I mean, all of that is our response to unfortunately what's going on in the United States um over the last year and plus, especially the last you know, seven months, eight months.

Hilary 4:15

Yes. And I think that there's so much going on in the world. We you know, when we spoke, we were sort of coming out of lockdown, and we were we believed everything that we were told, and now it's becoming clear, particularly in this country, that there was stuff going on that that we didn't buy, we didn't sign up for, and you know, a lot of misuse of finances and uh misuse of power and you know, all of those things. And and my sense is that that this album band stories of censorship comes from a similar place to to where we are, which is kind of feeling like we have to stand up and be counted about these things, right?

Matthew 5:02

And using arts and music as a form of resistance and activism again, I think that goes back to what we're all about with creating cultural harmony, connecting communities and cultures. Um, so yeah, so the last time you know that this project is particularly you know enmeshed in our programming work of the last two years plus um around censorship. Our silence voices season began with this project around banned books in 2022-23 was a time, especially in Texas, where there was a lot of book banning going on, and so I contacted Allison Loggins Hull, the composer of band, um, to kind of that started our season and then we ended our season, you know, around some like the idea of being muted, um, and actually tying in mental health in that as a form of self-censorship. Um, we we we also dovetailed with like revisionism as a form of censorship, especially with the black community here in the United States. And that was really powerful too. And you'll probably ask about our you know commission with George Takay and how that happened, and I'll save that for for your question. But um, you know, a lot of the idea for releasing this album now, you know, last year we we knew this album was coming out this year, and my hope was that you know our election would go in a different direction. Um, and even if it had, unfortunately, you know, I think this this album and what we're trying to say would still be very relevant. We'd still have these forces um kind of pushing against decency and democracy. Um, unfortunately, it did go it went the other way. And so we, you know, the concert with George happened one month before the U.S. presidential election. And, you know, in some small way, I was hoping maybe we could move the needle a little bit or at least kind of create a little bit of um resistance there and some conversation. And we did, but you know, I never expected that we'd be in the situation where we are now in 2025, um, particularly in terms of relating George's experience of you know being interned, his family, soldiers coming up to his uh uh his his house and giving his family five minutes to gather their belongings, pointing bayonets at their heads and taking them to internment camps. Um, you know, and then having this alligator alley, whatever in Florida, where you know we have our our you know, our administration is sending people unlawfully and sending them to Uganda or whatever. I mean, you know, taking people off the street uh without any due process. I mean, you know, that the the the the parallels there are so frightening, and I you know I never expected that that this album would be this relevant in a way, unfortunately.

Hilary 7:36

Yeah. So let's talk now about Marty Regan's The Book of Names. So before we start, I want to play George Takay's opening words.

George 8:04

After the bombing of Hiroshima and then Nagasaki in 1945, the war with Japan ended. America had won, and my family, among 125,181 persons of Japanese ancestry, had to face the challenge of trying to reconstruct our lives in an America still hostile to us. The government gave us each a one-way ticket to anywhere in the United States and $25 to rebuild our lives. We had to fend for ourselves, starting with nothing, and we were still seen by some Americans as the enemy.

Hilary 9:22

But the words of George Takay tell me how that all came together.

Matthew 9:29

This premiere happened kind of by accident in our Revise concert, February 2024, here in Houston at the Holocaust Museum. We like performing at the Holocaust Museum here because I think it lends itself to more adventurous programming, challenging programming. Um, and this was the the main performer of the main premiere on that concert was titled Revise by Deborah D. Moutan and Jasmine Barnes. This was about, you know, how long is the the the main it was for spoken word, string quartet, and then a chorus of black, uh eight black singers. Very powerful instrumentation, unique instrumentation. Um, but the the theme around censorship and revisionism of black history has been going on for so long in the United States, particularly from some of the more conservative forces, and uh we wanted to kind of push back on that. So having the vo that that voice a part of that concert was very important. About a month before the concert, I was contacted by Marty Regan, who's a faculty composer at uh Texas AM University. He's we've commissioned from him before a splash of indigo. We played, you know, it was our third commission out of now, over 60, and uh we play that all the time, and we love it. So we have a great relationship. He he said, Hey, I have an idea. I love your censorship-inspired season, Silence Voices. Um, I want to be a part of this. And what do you think about my me writing a piece around the censorship of identity of Japanese Americans during World War II? Um, you know, being a smaller ensemble, you know, an orchestra wouldn't be able to kind of pivot to do something like this, but I said, Hey, we have a month of the concert, let's do it, Marty. I I, you know, I trust, I love your vision, and you you know, I know you'll come up with something great for this concert. So uh he created the book of names. This is in honor of the 125,181 Japanese Americans that were interned during World War II. Um, and uh there's a the it's a kind of 10-minute piece, very elegatic, very beautiful, as your listeners will hear. Um, it stands alone as it is now, and there's this really wonderful part uh uh towards the end where there's a climax, and then each of the four string quartet musicians, we speak Japanese American, we speak actual names of people that were interned, and becomes cacophonous, and then it kind of dies away a little bit and then kind of uh intersects with the music again. He lies with the music, um, and it's very powerful. And in the initial premiere, we had a scrolling visual of names going behind us too, which I think was really amazing. So it was really interesting that concert. After that concert, we had you know people in the audience that came up to us in tears and said, I recognized some people on that screen that I knew, and it was so powerful just for to hear them talk about that, um, of people of every race at that concert. So it was about three or four days later, and I was biking here, you know, at a park with my family, um, the Houston Bayou's. This is kind of our river area, and you know, nice, nice, uh, it's it's it's nice to get away and um see nature, and it literally hit me like a lightning bolt or a phaser in the parlance of a Star Trek term, that George Decay had to read his and his family's name in this performance. It and somehow I had to make that happen. It just I've never kind of felt that kind of electricity in my body before, but I just knew that I had to make this happen, it would be even more powerful. So I contacted his management in New York City. I pitched in this idea. You know, it was I never worked with somebody at that kind of level before, but so it was it was great for me to kind of stretch myself as you know the leader of organization too. It came back that George was very interested in being a part of this, and then we worked out all the details. The the the most difficult detail was getting them to agree to do a uh recording, a commercial recording, Hillary. So, but I knew you know, I went back and forth and I said we need to have George's voice on our, you know, we needed to record this for posterity for the world. And eventually we did work out these details. So it was it was um in October, last October, like I mentioned, a month before the election, um, we had our Liberty concert and our We the People season with George there. We recorded the same day, we did a concert, pre-concert talk with him, which was really wonderful. He told his story, told Star Trek stories, and of course he told a story of you know being interned and uh had the concert, and then we had a you know party uh a you know a uh book signing afterwards, and he was the last person to leave the venue at 11:30 with me. I mean way over his you know a contracted amount. So the humanity of George, the purposefulness of his life comes through so amazingly and beautifully when he tells his story. Um and for us to be able to allow him to tell his story to our Houston audience and now um on the you know on our band Stories of Censorship album, it's one of the most fulfilling things that I've ever done in my life, and I think one of the most important things Apollo has done.

Hilary 14:26

I agree, and I and I think the the Japanese story of the Second World War is something we don't seem terribly comfortable with, and and you know, there are there are as as in any war, there are there are things on each side that nobody wants to remember, but perhaps we do need to remember it. And I think particularly now, I think we need to be trying to bring people together, and and I think it is a time for us to go. Yes, we remember, you know, Victory in Europe Day was a big, big deal. You know, we need to remember Victory in Japan Day as well, not as victorious as but but as the end of that war as well.

Matthew 15:10

We do, and as George says so eloquently, uh President Roosevelt succumbed to fear at the moment, and also in a participatory democracy, we have to remember the advantages it's of the people by the people, but that's also can be the to the detriment, too, because the people become fearful. So um I and I think also kind of paralleling what George did in his life of activism after this, you know, and after Star Trek, and between you know his movie roles and all that, uh, is is you know, being in front of the Congressional Committee, which he talks about in the piece, yeah, and advocating for reparations, which Ronald Reagan did in the in Congress did pass. Um and you know, I think there's always a struggle here with with our our past with slavery, and and and amazingly, people still debate the what slavery was about and whether it was good for whom. I mean, it's it's the revisionism there and the Orwellianness of that is so it's so disturbing. So I you know we have to continually fight against that in my mind, and I hope that we can hopefully change some hearts and minds with this album.

Hilary 16:19

Yeah, and I think what one of the things that this album does really brilliantly is it allows America to look, you know, to hold a magnifying glass up to itself. Because in Brita here in Britain, we've what we've done, it seems to me, over the last probably decade, last 10 years, is we've kind of gone so much of our um structure democracy, but also the buildings and all that was built on slavery. You know, it was built either physically by slaves being brought over here or by the money that was earned by taking the slaves, you know, elsewhere. And in here we seem to have kind of gone, we have to apologize for that, but we can't tear down every statue, we can't tear down every building that was built on on uh on the back of slaves, because we would that would decimate, and we need to acknowledge that that that is the case. Um, and it feels like this album allows America to do that. One of the things I particularly like is Mark Buller's firewall, which has got references or is inspired by Catcher in the Rye, Slaughterhouse 5, Hucklebury Finn, and the Great Gatsby. And that's a fantastic piece of music. How did that composition come about?

Matthew 17:46

You know, this is another case where relationships mean everything. And Mark is a pro is a composer living in Houston here. He's become a close friend of ours and uh and uh a collaborator. Uh, we've commissioned a number of pieces with him over the years. Um, he also saw what we were doing with our silence voice of the season around censorship. He contacted me and through a couple of conversations, you know, he he I mean he literally emailed me back and said, Hey, I have an idea for this this commission, and it'll be around these five, you know, but he didn't have all of it fleshed out, but he knew you know to take different band books and kind of create a musical commentary around that. And the idea of the metaphor of a firewall, of being another brick in that firewall, is so powerful. And we'll get to the the fog belt element of that too, but I think you know, using metaphor, metaphors as you know, kind of launching off points for people to to grap onto what we're trying to do. Um, I think it's it's it's definitely it adds to the the power and the meaning of the of the music and the album. So I love what Mark did with these pieces. They're all if you're playing some of them for your listeners, um, they're all fairly short and sweet. I think kind of the the the heart of the movements is the fourth movement, um the Huck Finn movement, where he's you know on the raft, on the river, and uh he has this moment this moment of moral clarity where he says, Um, I'm gonna help Jim go to a free state, no matter what society tells me. So doing the right thing when it's hard, that is what's most important, I think, out of the you know, that comes from from that um from that particular piece in that album. Um so I hope that comes through. It's fun music to play too. I mean, he he really plays with the rags in the last movement, too.

Hilary 19:30

And um yeah, yeah, and and um I think that that fourth movement Lightning on the River. Sorry, yeah. I mean, as you say, I think this is what's interesting about this album. Although it's a concept and it's and it's got a message, it's actually really great music as well.

Matthew 19:47

So thank you for saying that. I appreciate that. And I I think too, also you can get the best work from composers and artists when you give them a kernel of an idea or you have some kind of larger theme to play with and then let them have at it. I don't like to micromanage, you know, what our composers are coming up with, but I think you know, doing doing something collaboratively, thematically, is has been really successful for us. And I think all of our you know commissions and and compositions reflect that.

Hilary 20:18

Yeah, and in fact, I'm gonna play the Huckleberry Finn at the end of the podcast. I've just finished reading Percival Everett's James, which is it's sort of retelling Huckleberry Finn from Jim's perspective.

Matthew 20:33

Interesting.

Hilary 20:34

But calling him James, you really should read it. It's a fantastic book and really easy to read, but it throws that throws a different light on slavery because it's told from the perspective of you know a black character who is nevertheless. I mean, he's very intelligent and he reads, and you know, he that's not how perhaps sometimes how he comes across in in Huckleberry Finn, but but Hucklebury Finn is not uh is not an you know evocation of the benefits of slavery by any means. So, you know. The final track Fogbell. So that's written by a Turkish-born composer, is that right?

Matthew 21:13

Airbruck Ariel Maz, yes.

Hilary 21:17

And do they live in uh in Houston?

Matthew 21:20

So Airbrook won our when we were just getting out of the gate, getting our name out there, that we were commissioning new music into 2014. We we had a commissioning call for scores contest. We had over 250 entries from 30 different states and countries around the world. Uh, Airbruck was the winning composer. He composes this really wonderful piece that you know listeners can look up wherever they stream their music. It's called Thracian Heirs of Besseme Sultan, Besseme Sultan, um, inspired by different music from the Thracian region Greek, Bulgarian, uh, Turkish. It's just a wonderful piece, and it features this clarinet, Roma clarinet player that went to the Juilliard School named Ismail Lumanovsky. Nobody can play. Like him, he's virtuosic and amazing. Um, so since that time, that's on our Blurred Boundaries album. Uh, we've collaborated with Erebic a number of times. A great result of that performance, he was able to come study at the Shepherd School of Music here in Houston and get his doctorate. Um, he was here for about four or five years, got his feet wet in the in the scene here, and then he was offered a position to teach and start a music school in Ankara, Turkey, connecting Western music and Turkish folk music. So, right up his that's exactly what he does. So he left Houston like right in 2020, the pandemic was happening, and you know, it was kind of sad this to not be able to give him a proper goodbye. But we've stayed in touch, and I think this last December, you know, this album was coming into focus, all the different pieces on it, and I just felt like we needed just something else to try to connect every all of the different elements of this album, the censorship and the banning, the books, and George's, you know, I uh George's piece. Um, and so I talked to Ebert and I said, Hey, could you write us a five, six-minute piece about censorship? And he wrote back, I mean, I could feel the emotion in his email. He said, You know, I I I it's it's serendipitous as you contacted me right now because I was just censored by the Erdogan government. He was to have a performance in the presidential palace of some of his orchestral music with folk instruments. And long story short, I think that the the you know, Erdogan and his his people there wanted to censor uh and change Airbrook's music. They didn't want the folk instruments, they wanted it less like shorter and it cut things up. So um he said no, and he said, This is my vision, this is my music, I'm not gonna change it. And so the concert was canceled. Um, so he's obviously very much in tune with what's going on still here in the United States, um, very politically active in the best of ways. Um, so he came up with this idea and the metaphor of a fog bell as artist cutting through the mist and showing the dangers that can lie ahead. Um, so I think it's again a powerful metaphor, and and it became um we had a local uh Houston artist render the Fog Bell image that's on the on the cover of our album. I think it's very powerful too. There's a little bit of hope embedded in that, um, but again, I can sound the alarm against you know these rising forces of autocracy here and across the world.

Hilary 24:31

Yeah, and and that it that as you say, that bell on the front cover of the album is is stunning, and it's a reminder, isn't it, that you know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls that's right.

Matthew 24:45

And you know, uh just that image, it's just it's it's it's really powerful, I I believe. And I the music is as a performer. I mean, you know, one of the really gratifying things for me too is I get to lead, you know, my ensemble, but also perform and perform in these pieces. And I remember we performed this, or we recorded it. Um, actually, we did really we got the music three days before the premiere in January, and then we recorded it the next month, and uh, you know, that was after the inauguration, and things were starting to look you know downward spiral and spiral and being able to kind of take out your emotions a little bit in the in the best of ways in the music and really lay into pieces. I mean, this piece really is an emotional force to play as well. Um, we had this Chamber Music America conference in Houston in February, the first time they've ever moved the conference, and um you very gratefully we were named the ensemble of the year. Uh, it was a really great and wonderful recognition for our work, and we actually played Fog Bell um during our one of our main performances, too, just to kind of talk all attention to that uh as well. So yeah.

Hilary 25:54

It really is a stunning album. Let's talk a little bit about the people on the album because obviously there's the four of you.

Matthew 26:00

My myself and my my wife, my partner, uh Annabelle Ramirez. We trade first and second violin. Um, do the best we can, and and you know, and people people wonder how we choose which pieces we're first to second on, and I say we flip a coin. That's not true. But we have certain we we have certain things that we that we you know that that kind of inspire us, so it it all works out um 99% of the time very cordially. Uh and then we have Aria Charagosha on Viola, and she's our new violist. She's has a Persian ethnicity in her blood. Her father's from Iran. Um they she grew up in the States, um, and her mother's American. And then Matthew Dudzik on cello. Uh, he's been with Ensemble almost since the beginning. Um, and then yeah, uh Jesus Pacheco performs on Fogbell. He's a he's a Spanish-American composer, lives in here in Houston. And of course, George Decay was was a big part of this creation. Yes. So, and and then the the and we didn't talk about Arman, but I I I've gotta mention, you know, we all know about Afghanistan and the history of hope of despair and destruction in this country um over the past you know many decades. So Humay N Saki is a world-renowned rhubarb performer. This is kind of like a dulcimer folk instrument, you know, hundreds of years old, uh indigenous to Afghanistan and Persian music. And he lives now in the United States. He's he's he teaches in the Bay Area, he does a lot of performing and you know worked with Chronos Quartet and a lot of other really wonderful ensembles. Uh, he wrote this piece for us that we premiered in our band music, um, actually in 2022 performance, and it's titled Hope, uh, actually, excuse me, it's titled Arman, which is translated Hope in Farsi. And for somebody like Homayan to have grown up in Afghanistan with all of the death and destruction and censorship, to have written and created something so hopeful, I it's it's very inspiring. And I think that that, you know, again, the the idea of hope hopefully comes that comes out in this album as well. Homayan shared with me in February, our last when we did the recording, when he was a child. I mean, this this this still brings it shakes me because to hear somebody talk about this when there were he was 10 years old, he witnessed his best friend murder 10 feet away on the other side of the street near his home. And it's just hard to process that. And we have nothing to complain about. You know what I mean? We have everything at our fingertips. Um, and and we're you know kind of throwing it away, at least at least we are over in the United States, in my view. Um, so I guess looking at what he was able to create from that despair and still cling to hope, it's it's inspiring for me, and I hope to uh it can be inspiring for others as well.

Hilary 28:56

Absolutely. I mean, this whole album, it's not just a kind of a sort of complaint about censorship. It's it's there's a there is a sense of hope, I think, in all of the music, in all of the messages, there's this sense that we're not we can't give up just because there is this there are these injustices in the world, we can't give up.

Matthew 29:21

I did a little bit of research, if you don't mind me getting historical. I I I looked up uh censorship in the UK, and apparently, I guess the licensing act of 1737 censored theater, and Lord Chamberlain was able to pick and choose the theater, the the plays that were able to, you know, go into production. And okay, you can say, okay, that was way back in the 1700s, that was a long time ago. But it wasn't rescinded until 1968. I mean, that that's just mind-boggling to me, too. So, you know, I I think comparing the censorship in Western cultures, I mean, you know, the United States and you know and and the UK have had such a uh you know mostly positive relationship. Um, but I think in any Western culture that values freedoms, and especially freedom of expression, it's really important not to take those values for for granted.

Hilary 30:13

Absolutely. And I think there's a lot of uh financial censorship where you know stuff doesn't get made or it doesn't get shown because or it doesn't get performed because somebody's got some kind of financial foot in the door of whatever it is. And I think that is something that we need to be aware of that we can't sit back on on you know, in in either the UK or in the US and just go, oh, you know, we don't have any of this. We do, it's just in a different way.

Matthew 30:49

And one one of the thought there is just the idea for artists here or in the care or wherever to be thinking about, oh, well, if I if I go this direction in my vision for this art form, whatever it's music or poetry or whatever, and and it has this pushback. I mean, and then you decide not to do it, that's censorship already, right? Like that, I mean that's that's already the censorship of somebody's creative process, and that's that's totally insidious as well.

Hilary 31:18

Yeah, and it's I think it's something that we need to think about. Because as you say, in the scheme of things, we don't have a lot to complain about in our in our way of life for most of us. Uh and we need to be standing up for the things that are right, and I think this album does that absolutely brilliantly, and and beautifully musically as well.

Matthew 31:40

Well, thank you so much for saying that and and you know helping it, helping get the word out there, giving us a platform. Um, one of the things that's become even more important for what we do is cultivating the creativity in others. Um, we're gonna be celebrating our 20th anniversary as an ensemble and organization in just two years here. So, you know, I think it's very rewarding to be able to put out something like this that makes a statement but also does it in a way that uplifts many other lives and you know the creative people in our world because that's where the real hope is.

Hilary 32:14

Definitely.

Matthew 32:15

It's with our artists and with those kind of pushing the boundaries.

Hilary 32:19

Yeah, and I'm really, really pleased that we were able to have this conversation. So thank you, Matthew.

Matthew 32:25

Thank you so much, Hillary, and all the best to your listeners.

Hilary 32:50

Please do reach out. You can leave me a comment on YouTube or on my website, hilary seabook.co.uk, or follow me on social media on Instagram, Hillary S. Writer. Please let me know what you think of this episode and others that you've listened to. There are coming up for 300 episodes now, which is an incredible feat that I didn't think I'd reach. But thank you for joining me once more for Harmonious World. What you're listening to now is, as I discussed with Matthew Dietrich, the Night and Day on the River, which is influenced by Huckleberry Finn. And I will put a link to James, the book by Percival Everett as well, into the show notes. Thank you for joining me once more for Harmonious World. Have a great weekend.