Akropolis is excited to be returning to Michigan Central Station to give a free workplace concert at The Mezz inside Detroit’s historic building as a part of their 2026 Together We Sound Festival.

Hosted by the Basilica of Ste. Anne de Detroit while they undergo a historic renovation of their building, Akropolis is excited to be returning home to Detroit, MI to give a free concert at the Most Holy Trinity Church as a part of their 2026 Together We Sound Festival.

Program:

Leonard Bernstein Prelude, Fugue, and Riffs
Derrick Skye A Soulful Nexus
Florence Price Piano Sonata in E Minor 
George Gershwin An American in Paris 

This concert celebrates the 250th anniversary of the United States of America with the GRAMMY award winning quintet presenting a concert by American composers honoring the diverse fabric of America's musical history.

This concert is supported in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts as part of America250, the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan, the Kresge Foundation, the Michigan Arts & Culture Council, and the Paul M. Angell Family Foundation.

Concert Program: America 250

Wrapping up Chamberfest this year, Akropolis' program celebrates our nation's 250th anniversary by featuring great American composers such as Gershwin and Bernstein.

As a part of Akropolis’ annual Together We Sound Festival, Akropolis will be visiting and performing for the youth at the Washtenaw County Juvenile Detention Center. This event is made possible with support from the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation.

As a part of Akropolis’ annual Together We Sound Festival, they will be returning to C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital to give a free lunchtime concert in Sophie’s Place Courtyard. This concert is open to the public and will also be live streamed into every patient room within the hospital.

Enjoy this free master class by the Akropolis Reed Quintet for the ~70 students attending the Luzerne Music Festival.

Concert Program:

Venus of Willendorf by Ryan Lindveit
A Soulful Nexus by Derrick Skye

~Intermission~

Amazing Grace (arr. Jennifer Higdon)
An American in Paris by George Gershwin (arr. Raaf Hekkema)

Concert Program:

Splinter by Marc Mellits
Piano Sonata in E Minor by Florence Price

~ Intermission ~

Venus of Willendorf by Ryan Lindveit 
An American In Paris by George Gershwin 

This concert will feature clarinetist Gleb Kanasevich while Kari Landry is on maternity leave.

Program to be selected from the following works:

Quintet No.2 by Miguel Del Águila
A Gift by Joan Tower
Woodburn by Ned McGowan
Trio by Lowell Liebermann
Snapshots by Pascal Le Boeuf
Dune by Marc Mellits
Suite by Viet Cuong
Shower Song by Ana Sokolovic
Newly composed works by ACMI composers Mary Denney, Dayton Hare, Annette Ma, Yanchen Ye, and Jason Zhang

Program to be selected from the following works:

Quintet No.2 by Miguel Del Águila
A Gift by Joan Tower
Woodburn by Ned McGowan
Trio by Lowell Liebermann
Snapshots by Pascal Le Boeuf
Dune by Marc Mellits
Suite by Viet Cuong
Shower Song by Ana Sokolovic
Newly composed works by ACMI composers Mary Denney, Dayton Hare, Annette Ma, Yanchen Ye, and Jason Zhang

Program

Marc Mellits: Splinter (2014)
Derrick Skye: A Soulful Nexus (2023)
Ryan Lindveit: Venus of Willendorf (2024)
Jeff Scott: Homage to Paradise Valley (2019)

Akropolis Chamber Music Institute is made possible by generous support from Interlochen Center for the Arts and Classical IPR, Michigan Arts & Culture Council, National Endowment for the Arts, The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, The Paul M. Angell Family Foundation, The Alice M. Ditson Fund, The Amphion Foundation, and with special thanks to Carole Alexander and Janet Averett.

In collaboration with the Alpena Community College Foundation, Akropolis will be performing at the Thunder Bay Arts Council in Alpena, MI on June 5, 2026!

** Clarinetist Andy Hudson will be performing in place of Akropolis clarinetist Kari Landry, as she enjoys her maternity leave!

9:00am Detroit School of Arts in Aaliyah Memorial Recital Hall
12:15 pm MLK High School 
2:15 pm Cass Technical High School

Akropolis returns to its home base of Detroit to run the Together We Sound Festival New Music Festival. On Thursday April 9th, they will perform 22 world premieres by Detroit High School Composers as part of Akropolis’s school year-length residency at MLK High School, Detroit School of Arts and Cass Tech High School.

Detroit School of Arts Student Composers:

EJ Daffin
Italy Mitchell
Tristan Stafford
Jacob Hart
Mia Peoples
Na’Than Bates
Mya Peoples

MLK High School Student Composers:
Cherish Lomax White
Brooklyn Livingston
De'Andre Ohia
Annmarie Scott
Ruben Martinez

Cass Tech Student Composers:
Madison Collins
Ah'Layna Powell-Swan
Josue Alejandro Zayas-Ponce
Davielle Haywood
Simya Bailey
Branden Dean
Nathaniel Smith
Donovan Barnes
Aubrey 
Asia Jackson 

These performances are made possible by grants from the Michigan Arts and Culture Council, National Endowment for the Arts, Kresge Foundation, Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan, Find Your Light Foundation, Baiardi Family Foundation, and Eagles for Children. They are also generously supported by Joel Howell, Janet Averett, and Carole Alexander.

This concert is FREE! Join Akropolis at the University of Alabama to round out their residency with an evening concert at 7:30pm at the University of Alabama School of Music! This concert will be in the Moody Music Building, Million Dollar Band Rehearsal Room 1000.

Concert Program

Florence Price (1887-1953)
Sonata in E Minor (1932)
II. Andante
I. Andante–Allegro

Derrick Skye (1982)
A Soulful Nexus (2023)

~Intermission~

Ryan Lindveit (b. 1994)
Venus of Willendorf (2024) 

George Gershwin (1898-1937)
An American in Paris (1928) arr. Raaf Hekkema 

Akropolis Reed Quintet Concert Celebrating the Paul M. Boylan Alumni Award

As the first ensemble to be given the Paul Boylan Award by the SMTD Alumni Board, Akropolis Reed Quintet will perform a recital at 8:00 pm on Tuesday, March 10, 2026 in Stamps Auditorium.

The program will include the world premiere of a new work by SMTD student composer and soprano, Mikeila McQueston, who will also perform with Akropolis on her new composition. Additional works programmed will include Derrick Skye’s A Soulful Nexus, a feature on the quintet’s forthcoming 7th album, and additional works reflecting the ensemble’s roots at the University of Michigan and its ongoing commitment to shaping the future of the reed quintet.

"It is a tremendous honor to be the first ensemble to ever receive this prestigious alumni award. We owe so much to the U-M faculty and community for bringing the five of us together, and for their unwavering support of our ambition to succeed with our reed quintet, an unheard-of chamber ensemble when we were students. To receive this accolade over a decade later means so much to the five of us. Thank you!" ~Akropolis

Moab Music Festival’s 2026 Winterlude Finale features a split-bill by composer-pianist Pascal Le Boeuf’s trailblazing “Ritual Being” project (with Nick Photinos, cello and Christian Euman, drums) and the adventurous Akropolis Reed Quintet (oboe, clarinet, saxophone, bassoon, bass clarinet) including a collaborative performance of their GRAMMY-winning “Are We Dreaming a Same Dream“?” album. 

In this Winterlude edition of Sips & Sounds, meet the Grammy-winning Akropolis Reed Quintet (oboe, saxophone, clarinet, bass clarinet, and bassoon)! Sip a drink, listen to short performances by Akropolis, and engage in conversation about their journey as a pioneering reed quintet moderated by Festival Artistic Director, Tessa Lark.

Admission to this 21+ event is free, with food and drink available for purchase.

On Monday, February 16, 2026 at 7:30 PM at Manhattan’s Advent Lutheran Church, Music Mondays presents the chart-topping Akropolis Reed Quintet, a “collective voice driven by real excitement and a sense of adventure" (The Wire), in a vibrant and wide-ranging program joined by GRAMMY® Award-winning baritone Kenneth Overton. The evening reflects Akropolis’s expansive approach to contemporary chamber music, blending adventurous arrangements, newly commissioned works, and vocal repertoire. 

The program opens with the New York premiere of Mass by Detroit-based composer Harriet Steinke. Commissioned for Akropolis Reed Quintet, Steinke’s Mass is a 35-minute instrumental work that occupies the entire first half of the program. Conceived as a reimagining of the traditional Mass Ordinary – Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei – the piece is lush and atmospheric, designed specifically for reverberant spaces such as the historic Advent Lutheran Church. Akropolis premiered Mass on June 1, 2025 at the Basilica of Sainte Anne de Detroit.

Kenneth Overton joins the ensemble for GRAMMY®-nominated composer Remy Le Boeuf’s original arrangement of God Bless the Child. Akropolis and Overton first began collaborating through the ensemble’s Chamber Music Institute in Northern Michigan, which invites emerging composers, instrumentalists, and ensembles to create new music alongside Akropolis each summer at Interlochen Center for the Arts. Overton is a 2020 GRAMMY® Award winner for Best Choral Performance for his portrayal of the title role in Richard Danielpour’s The Passion of Yeshua with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus, conducted by JoAnn Falletta.

The program concludes with George Gershwin’s An American in Paris in an inventive arrangement by Dutch saxophonist and composer Raaf Hekkema.

Masterworks

Maurice Ravel: Le Tombeau de Couperin arr. Raaf Hekkema
Omar Thomas: Moods and Attitudes
Derrick Skye: A Soulful Nexus
George Gershwin: An American in Paris arr. Raaf Hekkema

Program

Ryan Lindveit: Venus of Willendorf

From the composer: I first learned about the Venus of Willendorf, a 30,000-year-old, 4.4-inch carved limestone figure found in Austria, in an art history class in 2014, and so it was with tremendous sense of anticipation and excitement that I approached visiting the Natural History Museum Vienna, where the figure is currently exhibited, ten years later. In the same spirit of joyful enthusiasm, I composed Venus of Willendorf for the Akropolis Reed Quintet, a group of musicians who eagerly tackle every musical challenge with artistry and aplomb. The origins of the Venus figurine are mysterious, as is its meaning, though some scholars theorize that it is associated with fertility, growth, and vitality. In response to this theory, I composed exuberant and vigorous music for these talented musicians. Additionally, the Venus is both quite tiny and amply voluptuous, so I often simultaneously feature high notes in the oboe with low notes in the bass clarinet to reflect metaphorical mappings of high sounds with small things and low sounds with large things.

Derrick Skye: A Soulful Nexus

From the composer: "A Soulful Nexus is a transcultural classical work that blends elements of Persian classical music with ornamental vocal techniques found in solo Balkan vocal melodies and the groove-based polyrhythms characteristic of electronic dance music. From Persian classical music, the piece uses an E koron, which to the Western trained ear may sound like a flat microtonal pitch. However, in Persian classical music, a koron is considered its own note, not a microtone between notes. Sonically, this demonstrates how something initially perceived as an imperfection, over time and with change in perspective, can be seen as an aspect of perfection.

Central to A Soulful Nexus is the use of the melodic framework Gushé Shekaste from Persian classical music, which includes the E koron. Shekaste translated means "broken," due to the relationship between the main tetrachord and auxiliary notes of this melodic framework. Throughout the piece, Morakab-Navazie is used to move between Gushé Shekaste and Darâmad Dastgâh-e Mahur and Dastgâh-e Râstpanjgâh. The fourth movement in particular is inspired by Afro-Persian music from Southern Iran. From Balkan music, the piece uses mordents and fragmented motivic phrasing often used by solo vocalists in Bulgarian women's choir music. From electronic dance music, A Soulful Nexus uses cyclical, groove-based polyrhythms to accompany instrumental solos. The title A Soulful Nexus serves as an invitation for listeners and performers to trace the intricate pathways of these musical idioms interwoven throughout the composition." 

A Soulful Nexus has been made possible by the Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Program, with generous funding provided by The Mellon Foundation.

George Gershwin: An American in Paris arr. Raaf Hekkema

In An American in Paris, Gershwin aimed to create one of his more serious works despite his natural affinity for frivolity. He consulted Ravel about this conundrum, who wisely instructed that if Gershwin was making more money than Ravel (which he was), he shouldn't change how he writes his music. He sought advice from Nadia Boulanger, the great teacher of Aaron Copland and others. She also wisely suggested to Gershwin try to be no one but Gershwin. And so, using complex motivic development which is constantly modulating and changing form, Gershwin manages to create his most accessible, but simultaneously most complex piece of music. Among the challenges Dutch saxophonist Raaf Hekkema faced in arranging the work was how to convey these ideas with only 5 instruments. Hekkema brilliantly takes a smaller color palette and combines the instruments to create more textural possibilities than the listener could ever predict. In ways, while Gershwin's orchestration maximizes the orchestra's capabilities, the listener might find Gershwin's ideas even easier to deduce in the chamber music format. The continually repeating and evolving motives make for a challenging but thrilling performance which Akropolis is delighted to bring to the stage.

Program

Ryan Lindveit: Venus of Willendorf

From the composer: I first learned about the Venus of Willendorf, a 30,000-year-old, 4.4-inch carved limestone figure found in Austria, in an art history class in 2014, and so it was with tremendous sense of anticipation and excitement that I approached visiting the Natural History Museum Vienna, where the figure is currently exhibited, ten years later. In the same spirit of joyful enthusiasm, I composed Venus of Willendorf for the Akropolis Reed Quintet, a group of musicians who eagerly tackle every musical challenge with artistry and aplomb. The origins of the Venus figurine are mysterious, as is its meaning, though some scholars theorize that it is associated with fertility, growth, and vitality. In response to this theory, I composed exuberant and vigorous music for these talented musicians. Additionally, the Venus is both quite tiny and amply voluptuous, so I often simultaneously feature high notes in the oboe with low notes in the bass clarinet to reflect metaphorical mappings of high sounds with small things and low sounds with large things.

Derrick Skye: A Soulful Nexus

From the composer: "A Soulful Nexus is a transcultural classical work that blends elements of Persian classical music with ornamental vocal techniques found in solo Balkan vocal melodies and the groove-based polyrhythms characteristic of electronic dance music. From Persian classical music, the piece uses an E koron, which to the Western trained ear may sound like a flat microtonal pitch. However, in Persian classical music, a koron is considered its own note, not a microtone between notes. Sonically, this demonstrates how something initially perceived as an imperfection, over time and with change in perspective, can be seen as an aspect of perfection.

Central to A Soulful Nexus is the use of the melodic framework Gushé Shekaste from Persian classical music, which includes the E koron. Shekaste translated means "broken," due to the relationship between the main tetrachord and auxiliary notes of this melodic framework. Throughout the piece, Morakab-Navazie is used to move between Gushé Shekaste and Darâmad Dastgâh-e Mahur and Dastgâh-e Râstpanjgâh. The fourth movement in particular is inspired by Afro-Persian music from Southern Iran. From Balkan music, the piece uses mordents and fragmented motivic phrasing often used by solo vocalists in Bulgarian women's choir music. From electronic dance music, A Soulful Nexus uses cyclical, groove-based polyrhythms to accompany instrumental solos. The title A Soulful Nexus serves as an invitation for listeners and performers to trace the intricate pathways of these musical idioms interwoven throughout the composition." 

A Soulful Nexus has been made possible by the Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Program, with generous funding provided by The Mellon Foundation.

Augusta Read Thomas: Bebop Riddle IV

From the composer: Bebop Riddle IV was inspired by the vibrant, dazzling technique, flair, spirit for adventure, and musicality of the Akropolis Reed Quintet. When composing, playing, and hearing Bebop Riddle IV the virtuosity, flexibility, and energy of superstar jazz artists leaps to ear and mind. These forces, when intersected with other specific musical perfumes, formulate a unique sonic palette. Thomas says, “I love how music talks with music.” Imagine the pointillistic intricacy and contrapuntal, conversational, interlocking-lines of J.S. Bach’s keyboard music crisscrossed with Bill-Evans-and-Thelonious-Monk-like harmonies, then further overlapped with the energy of bebop’s fast tempo, rapid chord changes, mood shifts, rhythmic invention, and instrumental flair. Thomas braids these auras (there are no musical quotes in the composition) into a personal, nuanced amalgam that captures the spirit of improvisation, at turns whimsical, soulful, vivacious, reflective, and animated. Thomas says, “There is a lifeforce when one musician speaks in music with another. Even if from time to time one musician is silent, there is still an animated spirit and energy.” She writes on her score, “Full of spirit; Enthusiastic inner-life for each note, line, and hocket.” This refined composition is an 8-minute conversation between wind players as well as a conversation between composer and some of her musical idols. Thomas is composing a series of “Bebop Riddles” all of which are completely independent, unique works. 

Bebop Riddle IV was made possible with generous support from Dick Niemi. Dedicated with admiration and gratitude to Akropolis Reed Quintet and Dick Niemi.

George Gershwin: An American in Paris arr. Raaf Hekkema

In An American in Paris, Gershwin aimed to create one of his more serious works despite his natural affinity for frivolity. He consulted Ravel about this conundrum, who wisely instructed that if Gershwin was making more money than Ravel (which he was), he shouldn't change how he writes his music. He sought advice from Nadia Boulanger, the great teacher of Aaron Copland and others. She also wisely suggested to Gershwin try to be no one but Gershwin. And so, using complex motivic development which is constantly modulating and changing form, Gershwin manages to create his most accessible, but simultaneously most complex piece of music. Among the challenges Dutch saxophonist Raaf Hekkema faced in arranging the work was how to convey these ideas with only 5 instruments. Hekkema brilliantly takes a smaller color palette and combines the instruments to create more textural possibilities than the listener could ever predict. In ways, while Gershwin's orchestration maximizes the orchestra's capabilities, the listener might find Gershwin's ideas even easier to deduce in the chamber music format. The continually repeating and evolving motives make for a challenging but thrilling performance which Akropolis is delighted to bring to the stage.