This project was supported by a Houston Arts Alliance grant and MUSIQA, and premiered at MATCH on November 19th, 2025.
Caio Diniz, Emily Richardson, and Nicholas Lindell presented a program of new compositions for string trio by Catarina Domenici, Erberk Eryılmaz, Alice Hong, and Tian Qin based upon their unique cultural and musical backgrounds: Emily Richardson’s Japanese-American upbringing, Caio Diniz’s Brazilian heritage, Nicholas Lindell’s Celtic and bluegrass fiddling history, and each composer’s life and musical background.
Though often touted as a “universal language,” music is anything but. Every culture and each individual person carries their own unique musical inheritance. Over time, this uniqueness tends to rub off, resulting in a cross-contamination of cultural influences. As evident throughout history, this can often appear as an inception of quotes between artists, cultures, and styles. REFRACTED aims to magnify these mutual influences.
More about the commissioned works and their relationship to the project below:
Aksak Groovebox
Erberk's piece, Aksak Groovebox, draws heavily on the traditional Aksak genre from his Turkish homeland, in this case featuring high-octane synthesizer licks. (Rad!!)
Erberk studied Western European classical composition in the United States and elsewhere, and this piece further refracts his own encounters with music outside of Turkey back into a Turkish sound world.
In particular, Aksak Groovebox actually quotes Aaron Copland's Clarinet Concerto, and it ubiquitously references Dave Brubeck's Blue Rondo à la Turk--a jazz classic using aksak rhythms which is itself titled as a reference to W.A. Mozart's iconic Rondo Alla Turca, a typical example of Western stylizations of what Europeans thought non-Western music was like (with varying levels of cultural sensitivity).
In this way, Erberk's work is a deeply multi-level reference featuring the messy, back-and-forth, bidirectional influences of musicians and cultures upon each other. It demonstrates Erberk refracting Brubeck refracting Turkish aksak by turning it back into aksak, with further cultural influences on Brubeck from Mozart refracting Turkish marches, and with Copland and electronic music influencing Erberk!
Crosswinds
The performers' own arrangements
Caio, Emily, and myself also arranged music from our own upbringing for string trio! This blurred the lines between composer and performer, and integrated our culturally distinct voices into the project more closely than a simple commissioning project could have done.
My own arrangement is a virtuosic setting of two of the first fiddle tunes I ever learned; it's a good honkin' D major chop and shred fest, that (naturally) starts with a viola solo and finishes with a big unison. I even sprinkled in a "quasi Baroque" section for Emily, and some 3+3+2 rhythms for Caio. Contact me if you'd like the sheet music.
Fun fact: the tune title "Angeline the Baker" is actually a perversion of "Angelina Baker," mixed up somewhere along the way in the oral tradition of fiddle tunes. It naturally also has endless varieties--I learned it sometime a couple decades ago, and my version keeps transforming as I assimilate and refract other musical influences; here are some of my favorite fiddlers playing it:
Tammy Rogers King
Additional Thoughts
Composers and songwriters naturally draw on their own musical language and personal experiences during the creative process, and performers assert unique musical identities through their interpretations. This artistic and fluid dynamic between composer and performer is a powerful and expressive quality inherent to music. We look to explore and deepen this interaction by weaving all collaborators’ cultural heritage into the fabric of each piece ahead of time. And we do so by using each performers’ formative musical experiences as a departure point for the creative process.
These new string trios were written with Emily, Nick, and Caio specifically in mind. Though all pieces have a carefully curated and common origin of inspiration, REFRACTED brings to the stage a colorful tapestry of seven new compositions, uniquely pigmented by each collaborator’s personal style and musical heritage.
This project was supported by a Houston Arts Alliance grant and MUSIQA, and premiered at MATCH on November 19th, 2025.