Apollo Chamber Players’ sixth commercial album, MoonStrike, is a universal celebration of storytelling, space and folk song, realized through new works by Jennifer Higdon, Jerod Tate, and Pierre Jalbert. Higdon’s In the Shadow of the Mountain (2020) is inspired by her upbringing in the Great Smoky Mountains and incorporates the sounds and colors of the area. Next is the title work, Emmy-winning Chickasaw composer Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate’s multidisciplinary MoonStrike (2019), which honors the Apollo space program through American Indian moon legends as narrated by astronaut John Herrington, the first Native American to fly in space. French-Canadian composer Pierre Jalbert’s L’esprit du Nord (“Spirit of the North”) (2019) is a three-movement work that fuses three of his culture’s folk songs with his unique, contemporary musical language.

American composer Marty Regan specializes in composing music for traditional Japanese instruments, a fascination he has developed since 2000. Regan describes his Japanese-style compositions as "hybrid musical soundscapes that reflect the age in which we live, an era based not necessarily on globalization, but of partnership based on global cultural interaction." In contrast, Splash of Indigo features a complementary side of Regan's output, containing only works for Western orchestral instruments and voice. Despite the album's instrumentation, Regan's connection to Japan remains strong in Splash of Indigo. Splash of Indigo proves Regan is more than capable of inventing and developing charming and complex networks of musical ideas. In it's varied collection of chamber and large ensemble works, Splash of Indigo shows Marty Regan is a composer of considerable breadth and skill beyond his dedicated efforts to build a bridge between American and Japanese musical culture.