Apollo Chamber Players Releases New Album, BAN: Stories of Censorship

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 
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Apollo Chamber Players
Releases New Album,

BAN: Stories of Censorship

Globally Inspired Apollo Commissions
Combine for a Bold Statement on
Rising Threats to Freedom of Expression, Highlighting Works by Marty Regan,
Jasmine Barnes & Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton, Mark Buller, Erberk Eryilmaz,
Allison Loggins-Hull,
Paul Miller (AKA DJ Spooky)
and Homayoun Sakhi

Iconic Actor GEORGE TAKEI Featured Collaborator in Powerful Personal Narrative on Japanese-American Internment and Life of Activism

Out Friday, August 22, 2025 on Azica Records

Chamber Music America’s 2025 Ensemble of the Year

“Apollo recasts music for a diverse and multi-ethnic generation” – Strings Magazine

apollocp.org/BANStoriesofCensorshipAlbum2025

See photos from BAN recording sessions

New York, NY (June 12, 2025) – On Friday, August 22, 2025, Chamber Music America's 2025 Ensemble of the Year Apollo Chamber Players releases their eighth commercial album, BAN: Stories of Censorship, as a digital release on Azica Records, with a physical CD and special edition vinyl release to follow on September 5, 2025. 

Through Apollo commissions from a kaleidoscopic array of today’s composers, Apollo reflects on the threat of censorship, drawing from multiple cultures and historical episodes in this musically vibrant call to cherish and defend our freedom of expression. Legendary actor, author, and activist George Takei performs as narrator in composer Marty Regan’s The Book of Names, delivering a powerful account of his personal journey and life of activism following his family’s experience in an internment camp for Japanese-Americans during World War II. Through his inspired, timely plea for the preservation of American democracy, Takei’s story offers a stark reminder that even our most basic rights must never be taken for granted. The album also features works by Emmy Award–winning composer Jasmine Barnes in collaboration with Houston Poet Laureate Emeritus Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton, Houston-based composer Mark Buller, Turkish-American composer Erberk Eryilmaz, Afrofuturist flutist/composer Allison Loggins-Hull, electronic and experimental hip-hop artist Paul Miller (AKA DJ Spooky), and Afghan-born composer and rubab performer Homayoun Sakhi.

“BAN: Stories of Censorship is Apollo Chamber Players’ bold musical response to rising global threats against freedom of expression,” said Apollo founder and Director Matthew J. Detrick. “Featuring new commissions by composers from politically embattled regions—including Afghanistan, Turkey, and the U.S.—the album amplifies voices often silenced. In connective harmony, these works form a musical call to conscience, reminding us that in dark times, art is both resistance and refuge.”

In the opening track, Marty Regan’s The Book of Names, the composer draws inspiration from a comprehensive list compiled in 2022 of every person incarcerated in Japanese-American internment camps during World War II. As a young child, narrator George Takei was one of the thousands confined to the camps, along with his brother, sister, and parents. In this adapted version of the work, originally premiered by Apollo Chamber Players in February 2024, Takei’s story is set to Regan’s stirring composition as he recounts the example set forth by his parents, who had, in Takei’s words, “lived through the darkest breakdown of our democracy” – yet responded not with bitterness but by teaching their children the importance of participation in a participatory democracy. The climax of the piece invokes Takei’s impassioned testimony to Congress in 1981, urging restitution, with the names of imprisoned Japanese-Americans spoken by the performers in cacophonous solidarity – ending on a note of profound dignity as Takei recites his family’s names, and his own. The Book of Names concludes with Takei’s hopeful wisdom: “Our democracy is a precious ideal that requires all of us, as Americans, to actively engage with it to keep it strong and true and shining.” See photos of Takei in recording sessions with Apollo Chamber Players at Houston’s Hobby Center for the Performing Arts.

In the album’s title work, BAN, composed for flute/piccolo/stomp box and string quartet, Allison Loggins-Hull takes direct aim at the rising volume of books challenged or removed from library shelves. Often targeting stories about people of color or LGBTQ individuals – while being defended on accusations of pornographic content or indecency – these bans affected more than 1,400 books spanning 874 unique titles during the 2022-2023 school year, according to PEN America’s Index of School Book Bans. The work incorporates digital stomp box samples of the sounds of banned books being slammed, depicting the exponential pile-up of narratives under censorship. “Throughout BAN, musical voices are strained and forced into silence, representing the overwhelming number of marginalized stories being shelved,” writes Loggins-Hull, who performs on this track on flute, piccolo, and stomp box.

Mark Buller’s work Firewall, premiered as part of Apollo’s thematic Silenced Voices series during the 2023-2024 season, draws themes from seminal novels highlighting provocative themes, deriving its title from Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, on the burning of books. The four-movement composition develops around four additional works of fiction, in turn reflecting the search for meaning in J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, the brutal realities of war in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, the evolution of conscience in Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, and the topsy-turvy blend of high spirits and darker undercurrents in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.

In Jasmine Barnes’ and Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton’s work Revise?, also commissioned for the Silenced Voices series, the composer/librettist duo sounds the alarm on the erasure of African-American voices through revisionist history and literature. Composed for spoken word poet, choir, and string quartet, the work weaves together text from social commentary and current events, along with a call to acknowledge and resist this erasure, regrouping and restrategizing as the Black community has traditionally strived to do in the face of repression. “My goal in this piece was to create a sound world that supports the text, but also includes many influences of African American art forms, from spirituals to West African rhythms to hip-hop,” Barnes commented. “In a way, this piece is much like Black history of today, in which we discuss the topics that are being erased, to continue the presence of the past, replenishing what is erased and revised.”

A third work from the Silenced Voices series, Homayoun Sakhi’s Arman, takes its name from the Persian and Pashto word for “hope.” Sakhi, a noted performer on the lute-like rubab of Central and South Asian origin, is featured on this commission with long-time collaborator Rajvinder Singh, one of India’s premier tabla performers. In this musical reflection on war and turmoil in Afghanistan, the composer manifests hope as a touchstone for perseverance and renewal in the face of suffering, incorporating multiple styles of Afghan traditional music in a contemporary, Western context. 

In Quantopia/The Thought Police, composer Paul Miller (AKA DJ Spooky) creates a “dialogue across time,” linking author George Orwell’s writing on totalitarian oppression with events in the present day. Through a multicultural collage of genres and influences, the composer creates what he calls “my sonic response to the age of ‘Post-Truth’,” highlighting the pernicious effects of “fake news” and the social media algorithms that too often amplify it. “Orwell’s 1984 isn’t fiction anymore—it’s a mirror,” he comments. “Fake news spreads faster than facts, and the Thought Police feel less like dystopia and more like daily life. With Apollo Chamber Players, I’ve crafted this meditation on resistance—a moving anthem for minds that refuse to be controlled. This is music for a world fighting to remember what truth sounds like.”

In the album’s final track, Sis Çani / Fog Bell, Turkish-born composer Erberk Eryilmaz grapples with censorship on both personal and global levels, tracing its effects in his birth country of Turkey, his adopted home in the United States, and worldwide. The “fog bell” of the title becomes the composer’s metaphor for the role of artists as warning beacons, standing boldly and courageously against authoritarianism and censorship – as referenced by the Turkish poet Melih Cevdet Anday, who wrote of an artist’s “duty to persist, to write, to play, and to guide society, like a fog bell cutting through the mist.” Also referenced in the work is Turkish statesman Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who said in an address to the Turkish people: “When it is time to fulfill your duty, you will not consider the circumstances or limitations surrounding you.” The composer himself comments: “We are living in turbulent times across the world. In such moments, I believe music becomes even more important. A crucial part of our role as artists is to persevere.”

BAN: Stories of Censorship Track List
1. Marty Regan – The Book of Names (2024, rev.) [10:56]
2. Allison Loggins-Hull – BAN (2023) [8:38]
Mark Buller – Firewall (2023)
     3. I. Prelude [2:26]
     4. II. Through the Rye (Catcher in the Rye) [2:23]
     5. III. Unstuck in Time (Slaughterhouse-Five) [2:25]
     6. IV. Night and Day on the River (Huckleberry Finn) [4:42]
     7. V. Daisy & Jay (The Great Gatsby) [2:20]
8. Jasmine D.E.E.P. Mouton – Revise? (2024) [10:15]
9. Homayoun Sakhi – Arman (Hope) (2022) [10:35]
10. Paul D. Miller AKA DJ Spooky – Quantopia/The Thought Police (2025) [7:10]
11. Erberk Eryilmaz – Sis Çani / Fog Bell (2025) [4:54]
12. Marty Regan – The Book of Names (2024) [10:05]

Total Time: 76:54

APOLLO CHAMBER PLAYERS
Matthew J. Detrick* & Anabel Ramirez**, violins (alternating) 
Aria Cheregosha, viola
Matthew Dudzik, cello

*Vln I tracks 2, 8-11
**Vln I tracks 1, 3-7, 12

Featuring Guests:
George Takei, narrator & author 
Allison Loggins-Hull, flute/piccolo/stomp box
Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton, spoken word poet
Paul D. Miller AKA DJ Spooky, narrator & electronics
Errin Hatter & Jolie Rocke, soprano
LeAnn Broadous-Bowers & Kaci Timmons, mezzo-soprano
Wayne Ashley & Kenneth Gayle, tenor
Antoine Griggs & Gabriel Walker, baritone
Homayoun Sakhi, rubab
Rajvinder Singh, tabla
Jesus Pacheco, percussion
Melih Cevdet Anday, poetry & narration
Gökberk Eryilmaz, clarinet & narrator
Erberk Eryilmaz, synthesizer

Catalogue No. ACD-71385
Apollo Founder & Director: Matthew J. Detrick
Producer, Recording & Mastering Engineer: Alan Bise
Cover Image & Artwork: Lynn Lane • Graphics: Teresa Southwell
The Book of Names major support by Michael Managan, Rhonda Sweeney, and Thomas & Terese Kosten. Special thanks to Robert Simpson.
Tracks 1 & 12 recorded October 2024
Zilkha Hall, The Hobby Center for the Performing Arts (Houston, TX)
Tracks 2-11 recorded February 2024, October 2024 & February 2025
The Clarion at Brazosport College (Lake Jackson, TX)
Sis Çani / Fog Bell audio recorded January 2025 in Ankara, Turkey

About Apollo Chamber Players
Houston-based Apollo Chamber Players “performs with rhythmic flair and virtuosity” (The Strad) and “recasts music for a diverse and multi-ethnic generation” (Strings Magazine) through globally inspired programming and multicultural new music commissions. The ensemble is the 2025 honoree of Chamber Music America’s prestigious Ensemble of the Year award, which cited its recent themed concerts, highlighting American democratic ideals and the dangers of censorship, as exemplars of “exceptional artistry, musicality and groundbreaking impact on the chamber music landscape.” Also a past recipient of Chamber Music America’s Residency Partnership award, the ensemble has performed for sold-out audiences at Carnegie Hall and The Kennedy Center, and is featured frequently on American Public Media’s nationally syndicated program Performance Today.

Celebrated for blending vibrant multicultural commissions with social commentary, Apollo was described by NPR’s Neda Ulaby as a “young, dynamic ensemble...creating programs in response to current events.” The ensemble has drawn recent acclaim for its collaborations with the legendary actor, author, and activist George Takei, who delivered a live narration in the opening concert of its 2024-2025 We the People series. Takei and the Apollo Chamber Players were recognized for the program with City of Houston Proclamations by Houston Mayor John Whitmire and Councilmember Willie Davis. U.S. Congresswoman Lizzie Fletcher, who represents Texas’s 7th District including the city of Houston, wrote a letter commending the ensemble’s “artistic effort to bring enlightened inspiration of the Founding Fathers meaningfully into the 21st century, to expand on those ideals, and to help build a more perfect union through connection and community.” For the 2025-2026 season, Apollo continues on its themes of American heritage and justice with its American Story series timed for the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding.

Takei can also be heard on Apollo’s newest album, BAN: Stories of Censorship on Azica Records (August 2025). Previous Azica releases include Trace of Time (2024), praised as the work of “gifted musical storytellers” by Musical America, and With Malice Toward None (2021), which reached No. 1 on Amazon’s Hot New Release chart. The ensemble’s catalog of records has been featured on hundreds of radio and media stations worldwide. The organization’s debut feature film, MoonShot: The Remarkable Journey of Apollo Chamber Players, won international accolades, including Best Documentary and Best Documentary Soundtrack at the Seattle, Vancouver, Houston, and Screen ATX International film festivals. It is now available on Amazon Prime and Tubi.

A passionate advocate of globally-inspired contemporary music and art, Apollo counts an expanding catalogue of more than 60 commissioned works and eight critically acclaimed commercial albums. The ensemble’s diverse roster of leading and emerging composers includes Jennifer Higdon, John Corigliano, Libby Larsen, Pamela Z, Jerod Tate, Allison Loggins-Hull, Brian Raphael Nabors, and Vanessa Võ.

Apollo’s community partners include schools and universities, at-risk youth centers, refugee and veterans’ service organizations, and public libraries. The ensemble’s vanguard Library Voyage project, an initiative to perform in all Harris County/Houston Public Libraries, is the first of its kind in the nation. Apollo was founded in 2008 by violinist and music entrepreneur Matthew J. Detrick and violinist Timothy Peters.

*Photo credits: Album art by Lynn Lane, Apollo Chamber Players and George Takei by Pin Lim.

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