Announcing Our 18-19 Touring Dates, Projects, & Collaborations
This season, we will treat our audiences to several new works, collaborations, and special occasions. After adjudicating the 2018 Barlow Prize and choosing Stacy Garrop as winner, we are delighted to premiere Stacy’s completed composition, Rites for the Afterlife, at the Jewel Box series in Chicago. Rites follows a soul through ancient Egyptian burial customs and entry into the afterlife. We will also premiere the first chamber concerto for reed quintet and bassoon by Jenni Brandon, featuring Christin Schillinger, at Friends of Chamber Music in Troy, NY.
We are honored to have been awarded a coveted Chamber Music America Commissioning grant to commission Jeff Scott’s first reed quintet composition, which we will premiere in Detroit at our Together We Sound festival next May. Finally, we are thrilled about our multi-disciplinary collaboration with Detroit residents Juan Martinez and Zac Brunell, and Boston-based composer, Steven Snowden. Steven is composing a one-of-a-kind work for a scrap metal sextet comprised of Akropolis + special guest Zac Brunell, who will perform on a bicycle, designed and built by Kresge Arts Fellow Juan Martinez, which will double as a percussion instrument and pedal-powered wind generator for the reed instruments. The new work will be the centerpiece of our Together We Sound festival, aiming to capture Detroit’s industrious history and mobility-focused future in a main-stage concert as well as several rolling pop-up events around the city.
Our concert programs will feature these works alongside original reed quintet music by 2018 Pulitzer Prize finalist Michael Gilbertson, Nico Muhly, music from our acclaimed 3rd album, The Space Between Us (“pure gold,” San Francisco Chronicle), and more. We will blend this music with works by George Gershwin, Astor Piazzolla, and in collaboration with Concert Artist Guild’s New Music New Places Fellow, Sam Suggs, a new large-scale arrangement.
We hope to see you during our travels this season as we continue blazing the trail for adventurous music of all kinds. Come see a concert and say hello!
-Matt, Kari, Ryan, Andrew, and Tim