Akropolis is back on the road!

It feels like ages ago, but our last indoor concert for a live audience was in March of 2020. Many outdoor venues and live streams later, we’re excited to be back touring again! Starting this fall, we’ll be everywhere from New York to Washington, and we’d love to see you once again in our audience. To see our full lineup of concerts and events, click below! We’re also going to be announcing more concerts and exciting projects as the year continues, so keep coming back to our calendar for even more Akropolis as the season continues.

21/22 CONCERTS AND EVENTS

New Projects and Commissions

Celebrating our 13th year together, we’re going to be touring more new music than ever before! This year, our programs will feature a new 17 minute work by Annika Socolofsky titled so much more for reed quintet and fixed media, which features interviews from 7 small business owners in America that Akropolis, Annika and filmmaker XUAN collected. so much more will also be accompanied by XUAN’s live projection to further celebrate these individuals’ experiences and share what it means to be a small business owner today in America. To read more about this project, click here.

In addition to Annika Socolofsky, Akropolis will premiere a new reed quintet by composer and saxophonist Corey Dundee and new works by dozens of Detroit high school students as a part of their year-long residency for the 6th year running at Cass Tech, M.L.K. Jr. Sr. High School, and Detroit School of the Arts.

In collaboration with Brooklyn-based pianist, composer, and arranger Dan Schlosberg, and University of Michigan professor, pianist, and scholar John Ellis, Akropolis will be unveiling a custom arrangement of Harlem Suite during our 21-22 season performances, a 20-minute work for piano by Arthur Cunningham composed in 1970.

Utilizing Professor Ellis’ first hand relationships with Cunningham and his family (including taking lessons from Cunningham as a youth), as well as Ellis’ work unearthing, recording, and studying Harlem Suite, Akropolis is working with arranger Dan Schlosberg to create a tour de force, reimagined reed quintet version of Cunningham’s wide ranging suite, including 9 movements inspired by Cunningham’s everyday experiences with gospel, blues, church music, funk, the music of Fats Waller, and more.

The season will also feature multiple concerto performances of both Roshanne Etezady‘s Storm Warning and Peter Terry‘s Dawn to Dance for reed quintet and high school band. Plus, we’ll finally be able to tour our recently released 4th album, Ghost Light, lauded for its “range, agility, and grace” (The Whole Note), by “exploring everything from the Egyptian Book of the Dead to racial violence in their native Detroit” (AnEarfull).

Touring Highlights

Akropolis is excited to be once again returning to Chamber Music Northwest to team up with Portland’s own BodyVox contemporary dance company to perform NINETEEN • TWENTY, originally set to premiere in March 2020. A celebration of the music and dance of the Roaring Twenties, NINETEEN • TWENTY will be the sixth collaboration between Chamber Music Northwest and BodyVox that combines Chamber Music Northwest’s world-class music and BodyVox’s unique athleticism, humor, and rich imagery. If you’re in the Pacific Northwest, we’d love to see you at this long-awaited premiere as one of the very first performances in Beaverton’s stunning new Reser Center for the Arts!