The Space Between Us is the third studio release from Akropolis Reed Quintet, a group with a singular instrumentation, well on its way to redefining how modern wind chamber music groups present classical music. It’s an album about conflict and resolution, a story of how art and its reflection on life can bring people together.

It opens with the first studio recording of Jacob TV’s Jesus is Coming for reed quintet, a composition that juxtaposes fragments of speech and babble against traditional chamber writing. It’s followed by four Akropolis commissioned works. A raucous amalgam of influences, David Biedenbender’s Refraction evokes heavy metal, the vocal music of Guillaume de Machaut, and dubstep. The delicate, often meditative Gallimaufry by Rob Deemer belies the chaos implied by the title, while The Space Between Us, by Gregory Wanamaker, explores changing relationships through language, texture, color, and harmony. The album closes with John Steinmetz’s Sorrow and Celebration, which imitates a ceremony or ritual, calling people together to mourn and rejoice, and features audience participation.