*World premiere for reed quintet, piano, and percussion
We'll be announcing the date and location of this world premiere in Southeast Michigan later in the summer! 

The “pure gold” Akropolis Reed Quintet joins forces with the Grammy-nominated composer and jazz pianist Pascal Le Boeuf and drummer Christian Euman in concert experience that electrifyingly blurs the lines between classical, jazz, and contemporary music called Are We Dreaming the Same Dream?

These seven instruments have never taken the stage together before in the history of the classical or jazz idiom. Their fearless approach to creating new sounds and socially engaged art begs us all to answer the question, are we dreaming the same American dream?

In the 1940s, Invisible Man author Ralph Ellison sought for a “unity of American experience beyond all considerations of class, of race, of religion.” More than a half-century later, have we realized this ideal of what it means to be American? Le Boeuf’s evening-length composition for these 7 musicians explores just that. Are we really dreaming the same American dream, or is our consumer culture spinning us out of control?

The music itself, composed by Le Boeuf, draws upon a careful selection of his musical “ancestors”—Geri Allen, Dave Brubeck, Charles Mingus, and Leonard Bernstein—each of whom have historically represented a variety of perspectives concerning the unity of American experience.

This exhilarating concert experience will beg the audience to consider the unity or disunity of their own American experience, and how embracing one’s culture and one’s identity is the way to freedom. As Ellison observed, “the most agonizing mystery sponsored by the democratic ideal is that of our unity-in-diversity, our oneness in manyness.”