Fri

4/6/2012

8:00pm

Classical

pastNOW.

The Akropolis Quintet

• $25 Assigned Rows 1-2
• $15 Assigned Rows 3-5
• $10 General Admission
• $5 Student

• Kari Dion, clarinet
• Timothy Goklin, oboe
• Matt Landry, saxophone
• Andrew Koeppe, bass clarinet
• Ryan Reynolds, bassoon

Event Details

The Akropolis Quintet: Award-Winning Contemporary Classical Music Ensemble

For more information please visit www.akropolisreedquintet.com

On April 6, Akropolis will juxtapose the music of the French Baroque great Rameau with the up-and-coming contemporary sounds of new classical music. The two halves of the concert will present the past and present of classical music while illustrating the possibilities of chamber music to come. 

Akropolis' mission: "To provide prominent new composers a place to write complex, accessible music, where they can trust it will be performed with care and passion."

Since 2009 Akropolis has been a cauldron of new music, committed to mixing together the excitement and opportunity only possible through contemporary composers and their daring compositions.

Akropolis has commissioned 12 works for their unique combination of instruments and is currently in the process of preparing their next set of vibrant new compositions, including the work of Jason Turbin (Los Angeles), Robbie McCarthy (Arizona), Paul Dooley and Garrett Schumann (University of Michigan), and others.

Akropolis brings to each work their award winning presentation, having won the grand prize of two of the United States’ prolific national chamber music competitions – the Plowman competition and the MTNA competition, for prize money worth over $10,000.

Recently they have premiered works by composers Babur Tongur, Asaf Peres and David Heetderks. In total Akropolis has collaborated with composers from Turkey, Isreal, France, Japan, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, and the United States. Their programs are created to combine new music in the most accesible way possible. In national classical music competitions, their repertoire has proven to surpass performances by promising string quartets and other traditional classical music ensembles from around the country. Akropolis is committed to bringing the most colorful and accessible parts of contemporary music to the stage, and they embody this commitment in their passionate performances.

The evening's program will be chosen from works premiered by Akropolis in the past year, and other works Akropolis has performed during their two-time national grand prize winning season last year.           

Visit Akropolis' website for more information.  This performance is made possible with support from the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs.

Program

Nouvelle Harpsichord Suite in G Minor composed by Jean-Philippe Rameau

-Intermission-

CircusMuziek by Dutch composer Ton ter Doest

Fun Fun Fun Fun composed by Asaf Peres, written for and premiered by Akropolis in January, 2012

Pitchblende composed by David Heetderks, written for and premiered by Akropolis in January, 2012

The evening will also include a world premier performance of a new work by University of Michigan composer Garrett Schumann.

Kari Dion

Kari Dion is a student of former Cleveland Orchestra clarinetist Dan Gilbert at the University of Michigan, where she will soon finish her undergraduate studies in clarinet performance. Kari grew up in the small Michigan town of Rockford and began playing clarinet when she was 10 years old. In the Rockford 6th grade band program, every student was awarded points for how often they played musical exercises for the band director. Kari was determined to get more points than any other child, which she still insists was the most obvious springboard to her present musical success, though the most probable cause is clarinetist Suzy Dennis-Bratton, Kari's clarinet teacher prior to arriving at U-M.

Timothy Goklin

Timothy Gocklin is currently a student of Dr. Nancy Ambrose King studying music performance at the University of Michigan. A native of Manchester, NH, Gocklin’s interest in the oboe began when he was in the sixth grade at a U.S. Marine Band concert. Tim was infatuated with the "funny black stick sounding much like a tiny set of bagpipes." His mother told him that the oboe was one of her favorite instruments. He went to his band director the next day to ask her if there was an oboe he would be able to try, and from that day forward Mr. Gocklin began to cultivate his relationship with the instrument he has presently grown to know and love.

Matt Landry

Matt played tuba with the Plymouth Symphony for several years and has performed numerous times on clarinet and saxophone with the Plymouth Symphony, Orchestra Canton and Dearborn Symphony. He is a regular performer and conductor at Ward Church in Northville, MI. He can also be heard on two University of Michigan Symphony Band records, and he studied saxophone at the University of Michigan with Donald Sinta for 4 years. 

Andrew Koeppe

It wasn't until his Sophomore at the University of Michigan that Andrew began playing the bass clarinet. He started out playing a school-owned instrument in the Michigan Symphony Band, and quickly found it frustrating. The following year, he joined Akropolis and began appreciating the instrument's subtleties. To this day, he has never had a lesson on the bass clarinet. In his time playing with Akropolis, Andrew has performed on bass, but also on the Bflat clarinet and basset horn. His darkest hour was when Matt informed him, "We don't sit when we play." Playing the bass clarinet while standing marks him as clearly the strongest member of Akropolis.

Ryan Reynolds

Ryan Reynolds selected the Bassoon in 6th grade under the assumption that the instrument only produced one note. He soon came to understand that his ambitions for laziness and coasting were woefully delusional. Since those heartbreaking 6th grade days of learning not just one note, but three and a half octaves worth of notes, Reynolds has gone on to perform and participate in a multitude of capacities, including but not limited to: an 8th grade talent show performance of "Zero to Hero" from the Disney film Hercules, acceptance into the Interlochen Arts Academy where he studied with Dr. Eric Stomberg for all four years of high school, selection as a principal bassoonist of the World Youth Symphony Orchestra, private performances for his neighbors as he strolled around his backyard perfecting violent passages from Jolivet's Concerto for Bassoon, String Orchestra, Harp and Piano, contrabassoonist of the Traverse Symphony Orchestra, a resident chamber artist of the Pine Mountain Music Festival, one particularly abysmal performance of Francaix'sTrio for Oboe, Bassoon and Piano, and the development of a comical embouchure designed specifically for low Bflat commonly referred to as "the low Bflat face."