Joachim Horsley takes Bach to Havana

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

This conversation with Joachim Horsley gives an insight into the composer’s reimagining of Bach with rhythms from Africa and the Caribbean. His album Afro Bach comes alongside the work he does writing the music we hear on TV shows, combining inspiration from many styles of music.

Thanks to Joachim for allowing me to play extracts from Afro Bach 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 0:26

Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Harmonious World. My name is Hilary Seabrook. If this is your first time listening to Harmonious World, then you should know that it gives me an opportunity to chat with musicians. And the title comes from a Quincy Jones quote. Imagine what a harmonious world it would be if everyone shared a little of what they're good at. And heaven knows we need everyone to share what they're good at right now. And we need the world to be a little more harmonious. I'm delighted for this episode to be joined by Joachim Horsley, who is a composer and pianist. What you're listening to now is the overture African Partita from his new album Afro Bach, which takes Bach tunes and adds something. And I'll be talking to him about what it adds and why. But he's also a television composer, so there's a lot of classical contemporary music going on here, which is really, really interesting. So I'm very much looking forward to chatting with Joachim. Hey Joachim Horsley, welcome to Harmonious World.

Joachim 1:43

Oh, I'm so happy to be here. Thank you.

Hilary 1:46

It's a real pleasure to talk to you. And I love it when PR people come up with something and they go, Do you know what? I think this person will be a really good fit. And I and I was like, I'm always a bit like, oh yeah, all right, everyone says that. But then I looked at all your stuff and I was like, absolutely spot on.

Joachim 2:04

Wonderful. I'm so happy to be here. Thank you. So uh yeah, thank you very much. I'm glad. I'm glad. Well, I mean, it sounds like you guys like to see the world from lots lots of different points of view, so I'm glad to be part of it.

Hilary 2:17

Well, and that's literally exactly what you're doing. This album, Afro Bach, is really interesting because you take Bach, which is, I'm sorry, but he's ours because he's European, you know. And then you go, okay, well, then I'm gonna introduce some African and some Caribbean sounds. And so what on earth inspired you to do that?

Joachim 2:40

Well, uh, so I work um mostly as a film composer in Hollywood, and in 2015, uh, I had the opportunity to study music in Cuba. I had studied Latin, played Latin music my whole life, um, but going there in 2015 really, really that was an absolute game changer moment for me because I really, for the first time, got to see all the masterful rumba music and timba music that was coming out of Cuba. And not only did I learn details about the about the styles that I've been playing all my life as an American, but uh I also learned something about the energy and the passion that is really hard to know about until you go there. And so I'd always wanted to do a fusion project of classical music and Caribbean music, but what really got me excited was not just doing a new rhythm with Beethoven, but just the actual feeling and energy of being on that island. So with my project, I play a little role-playing game. What if Beethoven, instead of living in Vienna, was living in Havana? What if Bach, instead of living in Bonn or wherever he was during that part of his life, what if he had a Caribbean life? And I think we know about that, let's say Bach, for example, that Baroque culture fed into so much of why he did things the way he did. If you take that lovely and amazing counterpoint that we all love in Bach, and you change the rhythms just a little bit so it fits into a particular dance style from the Caribbean, does it still become Bach? Does it become something, does it does it stay Bach? Does it become something different? That's the question I like to ask. And that's kind of the adventure I like to go on with the music. And moreover, I think this project has made me um understand the composer deeper. And, you know, just like all of us when we're trying to learn Bach and Beethoven, we do takedowns, just like the old masters did uh with their predecessors. We we we I have to learn the music in an intimate way that I I haven't really before in order to successfully pull this off. And it's obviously there's there's a thousand subjective decisions to be making, but the goal is always to capture the attitude of Bach and the attitude of the dance style. So, for example, with a piece on the Afro Bach album, we did a piece called Bach Cumbia. And Cumbia is an amazing traditional rhythm from Colombia. Uh, it's sort of the pride of Columbia and it's it's amazing. And it's uh you see it in pop music with Shakira, but you also see it in tons of traditional music. And so taking a fugue and putting it in a cumbia style requires uh a rhythmic adjustment, but it works perfectly because if you if you can imagine that you know Bach had access to dance styles and so forth, as long as the rhythm is still there, it still captures sort of that uh Baroque floweriness in the music when you do it right. So the goal is to really try to preserve the best of both worlds in this combination and and make it feel all all at once fresh. And that's what that's what really excites me about doing this, I guess.

Hilary 5:47

Yeah, and and I think it well, it definitely does that because it it definitely brings it to life and brings it into the 21st century, I think.

Joachim 5:56

Yeah, exactly. I mean the funny thing is I'm I'm bringing things that are centuries old in both styles and trying to make a modern thing, right? But um, yeah, so of course we're trying to make a modern a modern record, but I think most importantly is I want I want people to feel like they're going on a journey and an adventure, and to me, this music is all very much alive. Uh, I know that we're we're dealing with with dead people's music, but it's it's alive. And you know, it I think Bach is kind of like he's he's in everything. I mean, he's as close as we can get to the to the center of music because everything that he did, every composer afterwards had to know how to write like Bach in every genre, and every Caribbean musician at some point was studying Bach. So we all know it. And and the the piano Montunos, you know, those those amazing piano parts we see in typical Cuban music, um, all those guys, they studied Bach in in Havana because that's that's how they learn the technique before they can get to that. So it's not too weird, actually, to be doing classical music with Caribbean rhythms. I mean, after all, Chucho Valdez and a lot of great masters have done their own version. I think what I'm doing is I'm I'm trying to make it, thinking about it like I'd like to make a repertoire that people will want to play as an alternate or as part of you know a program with the legit uh version. And a lot of um a lot of people actually have reached out and downloaded the sheet music from my website and and you know, amateur and professionals go ahead and play that. So that's really exciting. So I I'm glad to see that's happening, and I'm gonna continue to try to, you know, build these crafty arrangements for that for that reason. I think I think that's just wonderful.

Hilary 7:35

Yeah, well it is, and and I think as you say, you're taking music from different parts of the world and different eras and just making it yours. And uh one of the things that I really like about this podcast is you know, none of us is really reinventing the wheel. We're all just taking bits from elsewhere and going, Oh, well, I like that. And you know, the number of times people mention Bar, just as you know, you can't talk to a sax player without them mention mentioning either John Coltrane or Charlie Parker, you know, and it's and it's an homage to them. It's not stealing their stuff and doing it, you know, doing something that's a disservice, it's it's it's kind of taking it into a different context.

Joachim 8:19

Exactly. And and I think taking music into a different context is is kind of how we appreciate, just like you know, we we love the sun after three days of rain. You have to have variety in there to really appreciate it in life. And what's kind of uh important to remember, I think, is that uh Beethoven and Bach, they did that with composers that came before them. They you know and and of course, some of the arrangements, like uh of course, uh Rachmaninoff with Paganini, that stuff becomes standard repertoire, his version, and that's played just as much, if not more often, than the original Paganini. So, you know, arrangements are a part of of our world, and um I think composers have always shown their respect for their forefathers that way. And this is sort of my way of doing that, not to compare myself to Rachmaninoff, of course, but I do think it's important to, you know, do arrangements and and pay tribute in that way, yeah.

Hilary 9:15

Yeah. At this point, I would like to play a clip from Tropical Prelude. And I just I really like it. So where was your creative process coming from for this one?

Joachim 11:00

Oh, well, I I love this piece, and I I worked with a really nice cellist, uh Sebastian Hurtaude from France, and the idea was that um, you know, this G major uh prelude is probably the most famous cello piece there is. Of course, Yo Yoma and many others have made beautiful work of it. Um and I think there's a meditative quality that is in the original, and that that version of classical music is very, very important. And um so again, I think the goal here was to not lose that, but have a little bit of a sway. And we used kind of a Brazilian and Cabo Verde rhythm. Um Cabo Verde is uh kind of an Afro-Portuguese culture. It's halfway between it's the islands, halfway but if you draw a line on the map between Rio in Brazil and Lisbon in Portugal, halfway you'll hit Cabo Verde. And of course, um this historically was a was a pit stop uh during the slave trade. And eventually, of course, when slavery ended, you had an Afro-Portuguese culture that lives and thrives there. And great music comes out of these islands, like morna and all sorts of other wonderful styles. Um but the cavaquinho, the small guitar that's from Brazil, sort of is the most popular instrument from Cabo Verde. And to me, um I I thought it was possible to preserve that meditative quality from Bach with a little bit of that island feel here. And so that's kind of what inspired me. And and it just, you know, again, a slight rhythm adjustment, but it works really well for me. And uh, of course, it helps to have a wonderful cello player help me out.

Hilary 12:43

Yeah, and that cello just is beautiful.

Joachim 12:46

Yeah, thanks. I agree.

Hilary 12:48

Yeah, absolutely. Where did you record all of this stuff? Because you've got people from all over the place, haven't you?

Joachim 12:54

Yeah, it's really an international project. So I live in Los Angeles and I've recorded musicians. Um uh sometimes we work remotely on that particular piece. Uh, we did it on a remote line while uh Sebastian recorded in Paris. But often we record um abroad, and sometimes I work with people remotely. You know, after COVID, it was an interesting phenomenon. Half the world had um remote setups, and and then after COVID, I think everyone had a remote setup. So we we I record with musicians, sometimes they record from an island, uh from England, France, Europe, uh, and United States. And um fortunately we have all have ways to work together. Um what I really appreciate about these kind of collaborations, especially when, you know, I I've got my background and a folkloric musician has a totally different perspective. And, you know, it's not just that I I learn the rhythms of of these things, but they all have their own kind of feel and swing. And just like you could say Waltz played in Vienna has its own feel and swing, right? No one else plays like the Viennese, no one else plays like the Cubans, no one else plays like the Colombians, you know, and they they all have their own thing. So I'm kind of like uh this this tourist with these with these rhythms, so I like to really make sure that I I'm understanding exactly how to swing in each of these styles. And it's a it's fascinating. Um that being said, you know, I think what's interesting in music is when you have, you know, kind of somebody who comes from a different world and they're still them, they're just doing something a little bit different. It's like a great poet with a French accent speaking English, of course, they're gonna have a different perspective than a native-born American, for example. And I think that's actually really interesting. And so um that's what it's all about. That's the fusion uh approach gets you to something a little bit different. And as long as we're all focused on really understanding what we're working on, it it always comes out um like something fresh. So that's that's that's the really exciting thing to me to do something really, really fresh with these wonderful old rhythms and wonderful old music from Europe.

Hilary 15:06

Yeah. Great stuff. Uh can you tell my audience a little bit about your background? How did you end up here? How did you end up in in California writing stuff for TV and then doing projects like this?

Joachim 15:18

Sure. So I grew up in the Boston area. I had um uh a German mom who was uh passionate about classical music. We were the kind of household where the opera was on every Saturday, uh very loud, I might add. And um, so that's what was around me growing up with her. On the other hand, uh, you know, I was I was in the US and I I eventually started playing jazz in high school and discovering Caribbean music. Um, and I just fell in love with it and made it my my interest to explore it as much as possible. And uh eventually um I started uh working as a film composer after kind of working as a jing uh jingle house, having a basically a day job in New York, writing um, you know, commercials and things like that. But really I started there just taking out the trash and running pro tools for voiceover artists, and the owner would let me at night write demos on um at the time he was doing promos for like movie of the week on AE, which um was basically cable television uh original music. And that was great, and I started to win some demos and then started to do some short films for for students at NYU and Columbia Film School in New York. And then eventually um some of those films went to the Sundance Film Festival, and I went out to Sundance and started talking to other composers who all said, you know, Los Angeles is really where you should be. Um so in 2009, my wife and I moved out here and we started a family. Actually, uh she was pregnant when we moved out, and uh we had never looked back. And it LA is a wonderful place because you really have tons and tons of creative people. Um, you know, I worked uh as an orchestrator for other composers, and that's kind of how I got to understand orchestration a little better and also understand the the culture and manner of film composing. And you know, film composers have to be the kind of ultimate fakers. You have to know every style. You it is not acceptable to not understand how Indian classical music works, for example. And you you have to understand old film music, but you have to understand classical music and jazz and rock and Caribbean music for sure. Um and I and you know, I so I'm I it it's sort of um built in that when you do that, you're just really doing your best to understand things all over the world. But Caribbean music, it really is like a treasure hunt. You have all these different we'll never have a phenomenon like the the Caribbean again because of the mix of cultures and someplace like Colombia where you have indigenous, European, and African ancestry, and so you have this incredible mix, and it's so fascinating how that came about. I love it. And and discovering that music for me is really uh uh like uh discovering great treasures, and also it helps you sort of think about music differently. The way Cuban music is orchestrated, everything fits together like clocks and a like like uh gears in a Swiss watch, I would say. Um so it's crucial to understand that. And I think studying Cuban music actually makes you a better orchestrator in any genre because you start to understand efficiency. The Cubans really, that is really what it's all about. That dance music that happened in Havana for centuries, it's so efficient and the way it works, it's kind of over time evolved into kind of perfect orchestration, if you can say that. You know what I mean? Yeah. So so I think um, you know, for me, when you when you're uh working with an orchestra uh and you you want to make things as simple and efficient as possible, but no simpler than that, right? So that's that to me is a huge benefit of of studying all this music. So I I guess at the end of the day, uh I I get I really get excited about learning new things, and it makes me feel like I can keep my music fresh if I'm almost kind of at the edge of my understanding. I think that's the best way to say it.

Hilary 19:10

That's brilliant. And I because I think that you know, ev when people talk about Bach, they talk about the fact that the composition was almost mathematical and yet so creative and musical. So he managed to combine all of that. And I think it sounds like that's what you've discovered in the Cuban arrangement style, which is that you can you take things from all over the place and you bring it in in a in almost a mathematical way that that ends up being really creative.

Joachim 19:40

Yeah. Well, what's fascinating about music is when you study music, they say learn the rules and then uh learn how to break the rules. Now, when you study counterpoint and fugal writing in Bach, when you really, really study it, you see that sometimes he writes himself into a corner and breaks his own rules to to benefit. Um there uh the music is of course highly logical, but I think that we often forget that he he was an artist and he made a lot of subjective decisions. And then, of course, Beethoven and Mozart understood Bach and they did their own thing, and then and then, you know, um, like for example, in music we have this rule, no parallel fists. And and if you're not a musician, that basically means that, you know, the uh like uh something that sounds like old Gregorian chant come be kind of comes a no-no when you're writing in, let's say, a c a high classical style that Mozart wrote in. Um well, Beethoven, you know, there's many examples of him breaking that rule, and I'm glad he did. Um and then, of course, Schubert and and all those guys afterwards, they had to live with the specter of Beethoven. And so eventually all these guys break the rules for our own benefit. Um what's interesting also is you don't have to learn all the rules before you decide to break them, though you should just keep learning no matter what, right? So when I did Beethoven and Havana, to be honest, when I look back on it, there are a lot of, you know, I think quote unquote errors in that arrangement, things I wouldn't do again, things I would change. But sometimes when you naively dive into things, um, there's a benefit because you're kind of bringing you you don't know what what's not allowed. So you're almost like breaking the rules to begin with. Now, obviously you have to be careful because if you're making dance music, there there are rules where if you break them, uh people aren't gonna want to dance. But getting into that and the details of that is the fun part. And I think that as at the end of the day, as long as you're always making an effort to understand things and push yourself as far as you can, I think that's when music stay is exciting.

Hilary 21:44

Yeah. Brilliant. That is fantastic. It was such a pleasure to talk to you, Yo Kim. It was absolutely brilliant. Thank you so much for your time.

Joachim 21:53

Oh, thank you so much. And anytime you want to talk again, I'm here.

Hilary 21:57

That's brilliant. Well, I'll hold. I'm sure the next time you come up with something that I go, Oh, that looks really interesting. We'll definitely get you on. So thank you.

Joachim 22:08

Yes, yes. Well, the new album that I'm working on, I think, is going to be called Superfusion. And that's going to be a c uh many rhythms and many different composers kind of all at once. You know, I I I d a lot of times I worked on things as Afro-Bach, so that's obviously Bach with a specific Afro style, but um I kind of have a more understanding now of how uh certain styles can come together. And you know, we live in a world with everything mixed up, we have access to all these wonderful cultures and all this wonderful music. It's to me, it feels like the next step is to do uh multiple rhythms within one song uh and multiple composers within one song. So I'm really excited about that, and not to mention lots of collaborations with wonderful artists I've met along the way.

Hilary 22:50

That sounds absolutely wonderful, and I think uh it's really interesting the more I speak to musicians from America, we all need to celebrate the diversity that makes the world such a great place rather than trying to focus in on, you know, people that look like us.

Joachim 23:07

Oh, of course. Well, I think musicians, you know, Quincy Jones said it best when he said if musicians ran the world, racism would have ended a long time ago. We we know the value of diversity. I mean, a band with just four bass players doesn't work, right? So we know the m when we meet someone who has different skills or a different perspective on a different instrument and a different background, we're it's like water. We want it. And so, of course, I think it's very easy for musicians to understand how it takes all kinds.

Hilary 23:36

Definitely. Well, thank you so much. Such a pleasure to talk with you.

Joachim 23:40

You as well, really, and have a wonderful week.

Hilary 23:53

Well, I hope you enjoyed listening to that conversation with Joaquim Horsley. What an interesting guy. And what you're listening to is another track from Afro Bach. This one is called Cuban Concerto. It's interesting that we were talking there about the Cuban arrangements and uh how that all works. So, thank you for joining me for Harmonious World. Please do rate, review, share this episode, and others. There are 315 more for you to listen to. Loads of really amazing musicians that I've had the opportunity to speak to. And don't forget you can also look at my Patreon site and on the website, there are also lots of reviews of albums and gigs. I haven't yet been to a live gig in 2026 because I wasn't very well, but there are a few coming up, so I'm looking forward to that. I hope you have a really good week, and thank you for joining me once more for Harmonious World.