6:30 – 8 PM
FREE OUTDOOR CONCERT AT BEACON PARK

(Hou de Sousa remarks at 6:30 pm, Akropolis performance to follow)

The Akropolis Reed Quintet teams up with New York City-based design studio Hou de Sousa for a collaborative evening of light and music beneath the glow of the ultraviolet and surreal beacon installed by the award winning Nancy Hou and Josh de Sousa. The concert features works from their acclaimed and just-released 4th album, Ghost Light, including 2018 Pulitzer Prize finalist Michael Gilbertson’s Kinds of Light, “translating gradations of luminescence into sound, making use of the quintet’s remarkable capacity to draw out fine shadings of timbre without compromising the phenomenal coordination of Akropolis’ performance.” (The Wire U.K.)

Also featured will be a new masterwork by Jeff Scott, Homage to Paradise Valley, dedicated to and reflecting through music the history of Detroit’s Black Bottom and Paradise Valley neighborhoods and their rich history of music, culture, tradition, and Black-owned businesses and enterprises.

Additional music by Stacy Garrop, Niloufar Nourbakhsh, and Theo Chandler paint pictures of life, death, and rebirth. In the presence of the thousands of individual parts comprising the “Bounce” exhibit, Akropolis and Hou de Sousa aim to provide a multi-sensory, immersive opportunity to consider our unity and the ghosts of our history.

Bounce by Hou de Sousa

“Bounce” is a celebration of collective perseverance that links together thousands of individual parts and components into a unified gesture of positive change. Seen from a distance, the project’s iconic form evokes the trajectory of a statistical chart, but upon closer inspection, the detailed facets and blurred boundaries speak to the complexity and nuance of human experience hidden within the oversimplification of data.

The project primarily consists of parachute cord filled with piano wire, which combines to create unique triangular polygons varying in color, size, and shape. During daylight hours the canopy lightly twists and sways in the breeze, casting a shimmering shadow, while at night the project transforms under the glow of ultraviolet lighting into a surreal beacon and iridescent burst of color.