Hear Akropolis During Our 10th Anniversary Season!
Our 19/20 touring season is here! We begin our milestone 10th anniversary season this week in Mt. Gretna, PA where we’ll premiere Jeff Scott’s brand new reed quintet, Homage to Paradise Valley, highlighting the history of Paradise Valley, the now-displaced neighborhood which ran through the middle of Detroit up until the 1960s. We have known Jeff for several years as longtime admirers of his quintet, Imani Winds. Jeff’s composition, funded by the highly-competitive Chamber Music America’s Classical Commissioning fund, uses jazz and African folk song influences to recreate the vitality of former Black Bottom and Hastings Street. Following the world premiere at Gretna Music, we’re excited to be touring this 25-minute masterwork around the country. After Pennsylvania, our fall touring brings us from Michigan to Mississippi and Minnesota, Connecticut to California, and this October, we’re making our Canadian premiere in Regina, Saskatchewan!
Following our January 2020 travels to Nevada, Arizona, and Texas for the San Antonio Chamber Music Society, we return to our alma mater for the world premiere of Storm Warning, a concerto for Akropolis and the University of Michigan Symphony Band by Roshanne Etezady. Co-commissioned by Akropolis and the University of Michigan’s H. Robert Reynolds Commissioning Fund, we will premiere Storm Warning on February 7, 2020 with the University of Michigan Symphony Band—the ensemble in which the five of us met ten years ago—under the direction of our long-time mentor and teacher, Professor Michael Haithcock.
Read more about the concerto here.
In March and April, 2020 we’re returning to one of our favorite places for our 4th residency with Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, OR. For 2 weeks, we’ll once again team up with Portland’s BodyVox contemporary dance company for a 10-show celebration of the 100th anniversary of the roaring 20s.
We will also celebrate 10 years of Akropolis by commissioning 10 composers this season! In addition to the above works by Jeff Scott and Roshanne Etezady, we’ve already premiered a chamber concerto with guest bassoonist Monica Ellis of the Imani Winds titled CANE by Jenni Brandon, an educational concerto for Akropolis and high school band by Peter Terry, and Sprocket for reed quintet and a ridable percussion bike by Steven Snowden. Still to be premiered are works by Pascal Le Boeuf and L05, Kate Pukinskis, Corey Dundee, and Evan Ware. We will also release of our 4th CD featuring 2019 Pulitzer Prize finalist, Michael Gilbertson, and distinguished soprano Shara Nova of My Brightest Diamond.
We can’t wait for all this and more this coming year, and we hope we’ll see you at one of our concerts this season!