Apollo Chambers Players’ new season reflects cultural reckoning
“Pathways of Renewal,” Apollo Chamber Players’ upcoming virtual season, has a double meaning.
On one hand, the Houstonbased string quartet hopes its next four concerts, which begin Nov. 22, will act as a balm for what has been an agonizing, contentious year. But on a more personal level, Apollo is also pondering what comes next after wrapping an ambitious multiyear project that brought it widespread acclaim.
With Jennifer Higdon’s “In the Shadow of the Mountain” earlier this month, Apollo completed 20x2020, its series of 20 worldpremiere commissions dating to 2014. Each composition in the project mingles classical music with elements of folk music from various cultures — Japanese, Cuban, Greek, Vietnamese — including such American idioms as jazz and blues.
The series has been well received on such syndicated outlets as Classical 24, and half of the 20x2020 premieres have been featured on American Public Media’s “Performance Today.” Since Apollo was forced online by the pandemic this spring, its final two concerts in the series have so far exceeded 150,000 views.
“Houston is our base, but to reach out beyond Houston and show people what Houston has to offer in terms of the arts, I think it’s pretty incredible,” says Apollo violinist and artistic director Matthew J. Detrick.
Going forward, Detrick wants Apollo’s new season to chart a similar path of musical diversity and inclusivity.
“It just wouldn’t make sense to me to craft a season of programming that wasn’t connected to the world in which we live,” he
says. “I want to be as relevant as possible, as timely as possible and also kind of serve as an escape for people — but also give them the kind of engagement that can hopefully effect positive change.”
‘Emotional lightning bolt’
Founded in 2008, the quartet — Detrick, his wife and fellow violinist Anabel Ramirez, violist Whitney Bullock and cellist Matthew Dudzik — will open this season with “Transcendent Beethoven,” a celebration of the German composer’s 250th birthday … with a side of Abraham Lincoln.
For the occasion, Apollo
turned to J. Kimo Williams, a Vietnam veteran and composer the quartet worked with for 2018’s “Phoenix Ascending” program. Williams’ “With Malice Toward None,” dedicated to late congressman John Lewis, links Beethoven’s essential faith in humanity with Lincoln’s second inaugural address.
In his introduction to the score, Williams explains he was partially inspired by a photo he had taken circa 1980 at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., in which the former president’s statue peers over a lonely Black janitor on the steps.
“I felt an emotional lighting bolt hit me when I saw this photo,” Williams writes.
Beethoven “would shout — not even hearing his own voice or the voices of his opposition — that it is our world to change, and that we do not need to ask permission from above,” adds the composer’s wife, poet Carol Williams, in a different essay.
“Malice” is scored for string quartet and electric violin. Detrick asked maverick soloist Tracy Silverman — hailed as among the world’s leading electric violinists — to perform alongside the quartet. Listeners are apt to hear as many allusions to Jimi Hendrix as Beethoven in the piece, he notes.
“I think we’re all on the same page as far as our viewpoint that music can change lives and be a force for good,” Detrick says of Silverman. “We’re really excited to do this with him.”
Mixing elements
Apollo’s holiday concert on Dec. 12 will be an encore collaboration with Brazilian-born composer Jovino Santos Neto.
“There’s even some Jewish elements and some Indian classical elements there, too,” Detrick says. “It’s actually a really eclectic mix of styles within this Brazilian Christmas tradition. And some jazz, too.”
Further down the road, February’s concert will honor Black History Month and the Harris County Public Library system’s centennial with another world premiere (composer TBD) and the Houston Ebony Opera Guild. In April’s “Music of Exile,” composer Richard Lavenda — a former professor of Detrick’s at Rice University — will riff on some recently rediscovered Ladino, or Judeo-Spanish, melodies.
“We’ve done a lot of Spanish flamenco music before, and some Jewish music, but you can’t put a lot of these cultures in a box because there’s so many different layers within them,” Detrick says. “It’s a good opportunity to kind of peel back some more layers.”