Akropolis Reed Quintet: Ghost Light

Playing together intensively for more than a decade, Akropolis Reed Quintet have evolved a collective voice that appears to be organically integrated. if their technical ability, its scope, precision and finesse, enables these five Detroit based musicians to gel as a unit, total trust has to be a vital factor too. There's nothing tentative in their approach, and that extends to their programming of multifariously challenging and imaginative new works.

Ghost Light opens with Stacy Garrop's Rites For The Afterlife. Kari Landry's clarinet, Andrew Koeppe's bass clarinet, Ryan Reynolds's bassoon, Matt Landry's saxophone and Tim Gocklin's oboe seem to turn around a single axle, like spokes from a shared hub, as their agile instrumental voices trace the journey of a soul, as related in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Michael Gilbertson's Kinds Of Light translates 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 their performance.

Contrasts within Firing Squad, written by New York based Iranian composer Niloufar Nourbakhsh, suggest the disconnect between an execution squad, with its regimented flourishes, and the tormented delirium of their victim. The quintet brilliantly communicate that tragic tension. Theo Chandler's Seed To Snag, enacting the life cycle of a tree, seems consciously to stem directly from the group's organic character.

Finally, Jeff Scott's Homage To Paradise Valley, interleaved with poetry written and read by Marsha Music, reflects upon facets of Black American experience. Sparking together, Scott and Music bring another level of resonance to Akropolis Reed Quintet's repertoire. Ensembles achieving this standard of professional excellence can easily start to sound slick and self-satisfied. But Ghost Light finds this exceptional outfit audibly driven by real excitement and a sense of adventure.

— Julian Cowley, 4.13.2021

I was thinking about the Crash Test Dummies’ The Ghosts that Haunt Me, when the eerie, first moaning microtonal chord from the Akropolis Reed Quintet’s Ghost Light sounded in my headset. Spooky! This fantastic group of woodwind players from Detroit explores life and death at the far end of the musical spectrum; toe-tapping, mysterious, in tune and in synch. The cover art of the disc brought to mind the Dummies’ release from long ago. Look carefully, there’s purpose to the whimsy.

All the music was commissioned. Unusual? No, but the instrumentation is: two clarinets (soprano and bass), plus an oboe, a bassoon, and… saxophone! Here is range, here is agility and grace, here are complementary colours, never the cloying homophony of a saxophone quartet or worse, clarinet choir. Listen to the blends intentionally exploited by Michael Gilbertson in the brief and chipper Kinds of Light.

That opening moan is from Rites for the Afterlife, a four-movement work inspired by ancient Egyptian rituals guiding the soul from this world to the next. Composer Stacy Garrop’s unearthly timbres of microtonal clusters, executed with clean precision, draw the listener into the mystery. Unpitched whispery effects evoke reed beds by a river. Styx or Nile?

Iranian Niloufar Nourbakhsh based Firing Squad on the greatest opening sentence in literature, from Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. This melancholy, melodic one-movement work explores mortality and memory.

Jeff Scott, French horn of the Imani Winds, wrote the disc’s most substantial work: Homage to Paradise Valley. This is activist music, composed to poems by Marsha Music, commissioned to commemorate the destruction of Detroit neighbourhoods and landmarks taken from the African American community during the mid-20th century, in the name of urban renewal.

— Max Christie, 5.06.2021

The video trailer for Akropolis Reed Quintet’s new album Ghost Light (New Focus Recordings) holds a reverent visual space for this collection of pieces about death, life, and honoring the spirits that inhabit these realms. Filmed in a dark room, a lightbulb at its center shines softly onto the musicians encircling it. The camera’s focus shifts from one musician to the next as oboist Tim Gocklin, clarinetist Kari Landry, saxophonist Matt Landry, bassoonist Ryan Reynolds, and bass clarinetist Andrew Koeppe each emerge from the shadows for a brief moment before fading back into the dimness. UK-based artist Ashton Springer’s work graces the album cover, his eery, moonlit landscape and its many solitary characters depicted in vivid aquamarine.

The album begins with a work inspired by a culture for whom death was an obsession. Stacy Garrop’s Rites for the Afterlife draws on her love of the myth and lore of Ancient Egypt and takes the listener on a journey of the soul, with each of the four movements sonically describing trials of the afterlife. Warm timbral trills and expectant, uneasy dissonances depict a soul slipping from life, blanketed with blessings thanks to prayers written in stone upon their tomb. Low growls in the bass clarinet and frantic flurries in the saxophone add to a sense of spiritual unease (Garrop’s wish here is to put the audience in the seat of a funeral barque alongside the recently departed, drifting into the netherworld on a river infested with dangerous and horrifying creatures of the afterlife). Final salvation can be felt in the gorgeous harmonies that move slowly between instruments as this soul is accepted into paradise for the rest of time.

Michael Gilbertson’s Kinds of Light is a celebration of the wide palette of colors that can be achieved by Akropolis Reed Quintet’s instrumentation. Each movement combines the ensemble in a different way, balancing register or timbre, optimizing for a specific sonic hue as all instruments move from note to note together in rhythmic solidarity. The reed quintet becomes more than the sum of its parts and achieves potent hues such as the soft violet proffered in “Movement II. Violet”, and the vivid, bright greens in the vivacious “Movement III. Fluorescence.”

The large emotional weight of Niloufar Nourbakhsh’s work Firing Squad was born from a small seed: a line from Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude: “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon his father took him to discover ice.” The resulting piece takes a final moment of human existence and augments it to a 7.5 minute stream-of-consciousness work with tableaus flashing by like a lifetime of potent memories. Nourbakhsh manipulated recordings of Akropolis to create moments where the ensemble is faced with a mirror version of itself; an artistic structure akin to a person suddenly coming face-to-face with their life in their final moments. The crux of this work is absolutely magical: bi-aural beats loudly shimmer in and out of focus, unisons aching as they graze against each other and disintegrate into jagged harmony. The work ends in a haunting tutti exhale…a literal last breath.

Theo Chandler’s Seed to Snag is a powerful and profound meditation on birth. In the first movement, “Sprout,” thin lines unfurl like vine tendrils, timid and tentative. Single melodic fragments gradually fork into two; crescendoing into a cornucopia of verdant melodic growth. This work is a musical onomatopoeia, its score depicting visually what the music is portraying aurally. The second movement is dark and sparkling, with a bassoon line so beautiful that your mental gaze remains fixed AND transfixed the whole way through. The third movement takes textures from the first and augments them; brilliant eruptions of florid color give long moments of ecstasy to the final minutes of this work.

In his four-movement work, Homage to Paradise Valley, Jeff Scott takes us through the history of a neighborhood in Detroit: its beginnings as a fertile plain called “Black Bottom” for its dark, rich soil; its heyday as a hub for musical creativity; and its eventual decimation as this predominantly Black neighborhood was razed to make way for new development. Poet Marsha Music’s voice gives Detroit an origin story shaped almost as an Epic Poem, and her words act as literary interludes before movements I, II, and IV, setting our minds alight with images and sensations that Scott’s music fully fleshes out.

Akropolis Reed Quintet has done a beautiful job with this album. Not only do they performed these works with faultless detail and refreshing artistry, but they’ve given a reverent temporal space for the stories these composers decided to tell. It’s a true joy to sit and listen to these colors and tales that softly haunt you after the last track stops.

— Stephanie Ann Boyd, 4.20.2021

Ghost Light is more than an elegy. Sure, death is the common denominator of this Detroit-based ensemble’s fourth album, which continues Akropolis’s commitment to world-premiere recordings by living composers. Taken together, however, the works on Ghost Light set aside doleful hand-wringing in favor of a fundamental truth: One of our most powerful weapons against death is storytelling. That includes stories about death, like Stacy Garrop’s undulating, propulsive Rites of the Afterlife (per her interest in various cosmologies, this one’s on the Egyptian belief in a journey to the underworld) and Niloufar Nourbakhsh’s harrowing Firing Squad (my favorite track on the album, and inspired by the opening sentence of Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude).

But narratives come to the fore most pointedly, and poignantly, in Jeff Scott’s Homage to Paradise Valley, a tribute to Detroit’s razed Black Bottom and Paradise Valley neighborhoods. In it, he evocatively renders city landmarks, like a bustling, then slackening Hastings Street in the second movement and the long-gone Paradise Theater in the fourth. Writer–historian Marsha Music recites spoken interludes, referencing neighborhood stalwarts like her father, pathbreaking record executive Joe Von Battle. (Ghost Light’s cover art nods to his eponymous record store.) “Our own Black Wall Street here was born, despite the animus and scorn,” Music says. Like so many Black neighborhoods systematically upended, then and now, it would not remain. But, as Scott’s quintet and Music’s powerful poetry attests, ghosts are all around—and they have stories to tell.

— Hannah Edgar, 6.27.2021

The sheer sound of this group, made up of oboe, clarinet, saxophone, bassoon, and bass clarinet, is instantly captivating. There's a sublime smoothness of tone, texture, and ensemble that brings to mind the reed sections of great American orchestras like that of Duke Ellington or Glenn Miller. The Akropolis are sure-handed in their curation and collaboration as well, as the five pieces here interact and relate to each other in thought-provoking ways, exploring everything from the Egyptian Book of the Dead to racial violence in their native Detroit. Their choice of composers - all unknown to me except for Jeff Scott who I know as a member of Imani Winds - leads to a wide variety of sonorities and emotional impacts. Stacy Garrop's Rites For The Afterlife, takes us through the narrative of the Egyptian Book of the Dead with an appropriate sense of mystery and even a little Kurt Weillian wit in the third movement, The Hall of Judgement. Kinds of Light by Michael Gilbertson provides portraits in sound for Flicker, Twilight, Fluorescence, and Ultraviolet in colorful fashion, without leaning on the concept too hard.

In Niloufar Nourbakhsh's Firing Squad - inspired by the first line of One Hundred Years of Solitude - the quartet is mirrored by a recording of themselves, occasionally sounding like an infinite loop. Theo Chandler's Seed To Snag has almost has the whimsy of a classic Disney score as he describes the lifecycle of organic material, adding yet more colors to Akropolis' palette. Scott's piece, Homage To Paradise Valley, closes the album and incorporates spoken word as Marsha Music reads her poems about Detroit's earlier days. Scott's music is tuneful and sparkling, with nods to jazz, and Music's poems are lively and nostalgic, with their tales of her father's record shop and the musical luminaries that put the city on the map. The readings do interrupt the overall flow of the album for this listener and I can imagine programming them out after a few plays, but that's a minor quibble about this powerful artistic statement.

— Jeremy Shatan, 4.25.2021

Let me say that this disc represents one of the most integrated releases that I have seen/heard. This has the gravitas of a well conceived and executed prog rock concept album (remember those?). This young group of musicians from Detroit present themselves in a photo in the accompanying booklet in casual dress flouting the old fashioned traditions of playing in tuxes much as another creative chamber ensemble (The Kronos Quartet) did many years ago. The Akropolis Reed Quintet is a group of instruments not commonly known (I’ve never heard of any repertoire for this combination of instruments, any musicians/musicologists want to chime in here?) in classical chamber ensembles. Whereas the Kronos began work a with a long held standard ensemble comprising two violins, a viola and a cello, the classical string quartet which can easily trace a long standing tradition going back to Haydn and very much alive today, the Akropolis consists of oboe (Tim Gocklin), clarinet (Kari Landry), saxophone (Matt Landry), bass clarinet (Andrew Koeppe), and bassoon (Ryan Reynolds), an unheard of combo. Its history begins here.

Unfamiliar music by an unfamiliar group of reed instruments doesn’t exactly shout, “Buy me, listen to me”, but the prospective listener need not fear. The program here consists of all new music for this ensemble. There are no competitors, at least for now. But all this music in truly excellent performances/recordings along with remarkably integrated collaboration with visual artist, British artist and illustrator Ashton Springer, and poet/writer Marsha Music combines in an apparent attempt to reclaim the artistic history that, in the days of the booming automotive industry and the success of Motown Recordings made Detroit a creative center known round the world. Ms. Music (a nom de plume for Marsha Battle Philpot), a Detroit native, is in many ways the heart of this album. Her father was a producer for Motown and her poetic reflections on local history infuses the album with a certain authenticity. The poet states she was “born in a record store”. Indeed it was the Joe’s Records which appears in Ashton’s album cover art to which she refers (metaphorically of course)

Ghost Light brings a variety of things into focus in this paean to Detroit, the home of these artists whose work very organically includes promotion of the arts in local schools and other venues. In works generally focused on themes of birth, death, and rebirth this album tells a sad story of lost history, of razed black neighborhoods, of fond memories, of a once thriving economy now struggling but fully embracing pride of place while seeking resolution of (and forgiveness?) for past injustices while looking optimistically to a better future.

The art work itself is a nostalgic example of fine cover art which successfully reflects the content and the character of the music contained within. The illustrations which so beautifully attract the eye to the cover are continued in the accompanying booklet which provides concise notes which place the music in the context of the composers’ various intent and processes as well as the nearly cinematic efforts made to represent the intended content of each piece. Though neither the poet nor the illustrator are known to this writer it is reasonable to assume that we will see/hear from them again. That would be my wish.

This is the fourth album by this prize winning chamber group which was formed in 2009 at the University of Michigan. It contains five musical compositions and three poems (which precede movements I, II, and IV of the final work). All the music, as noted above is generally on themes of life, death, and rebirth as well as “ghosts” of the past.

The first work by the only composer here that was known previously to this writer is “Rites for the Afterlife” (2018) by the amazing Stacy Garrop whose facility with melodic invention and subtle use of tone colors permeated her exciting Mythology Symphony. The four movements are roughly analogous to the classical sonata forms with a longer more complex first movement followed by a slow movement, a scherzo-like movement, and a finale which ties them all together. Here she titles her movements: I. Inscriptions from the Book of the Dead, II. Passage Through the Netherworld, III. The Hall of Judgement, and IV. The Field of Reeds. The composer provides a scenario which is recounted in the booklet. Let me say that her tone painting is that of a true master and I advise listeners to collect anything she releases. You will not be disappointed.

Second is “Kinds of Light” (2018) by Michael Gilbertson. This piece, in four brief movements attempting to metaphorically treat each instrument as a pigment. The movements: I. Flicker, II. Twilight, III. Fluorescence, and IV. Ultraviolet utilize timbres and combinations of timbres to represent the visuals implied by the titles. This is probably the most “experimental” of the pieces here but the experiment engages rather than repels.

“Firing Squad” (2018?) by Niloufar Nourbakhsh. If I’m reading those liner notes correctly, the performance of this work is accomplished with the ensemble playing with a recording of themselves playing the work. This is the most overtly political of the works represented here in its intense single movement.

“Seed to Snag” (2018) by Theo Chandler is cast in three movements: I. Sprout, II. Stretch, and III. Sow. Here is a metaphoric evocation of the cycle of life from birth to death utilizing baroque musical structures.

The album concludes with “Homage to Paradise Valley” by Jeff Scott. This is the largest work here clocking in at over 30 minutes including the poetry. Its four movements attempt to describe forgotten neighborhoods of Detroit. The movements are titled: I. Ghosts of black Bottom, II. Hastings Street blues, III. Roho Pumzika Kwa Amani, and IV. Paradise Theater Jump. Movements I, II, and IV are preceded by Detroit poet Marsha Music reading from her work. The beautiful title of the third movement is a phrase in Swahili which translates as, “Spirits, Rest Peacefully”. The other movements channel the ghosts of these nearly forgotten neighborhoods and that third movement invites those ghosts to a place of rest and the peace of knowing that they will not be forgotten.

I’ve placed links throughout this article so that readers can find more detail about the composers and other artists involved. All of the artists involved here deserve at least a second look if not more. Kudos to all who were involved in this project.

— Allan J. Cronin, 5.18.2021

Akropolis Reed Quintet has been playing together for almost 13 years and began as a humble student ensemble at the University of Michigan. With seven national chamber music awards and prizes and counting, the ensemble has taken the chamber music world by storm. The members of Akropolis aren’t just elite musicians, but spend active time working as commissioners, administrators, educators, and advocates, to name but a few activities.

Their fourth album, Ghost Light, features all new compositions by living composers. This is a concept that is deeply engrained in the fabric of what Akropolis represents as an ensemble. The common themes that are interwoven and heard and expressed throughout each piece are concepts of life-cycles revolving around the use of darkness, light, colors, instrumentation, and texture. Often times, death and rebirth are themes. The entire album is effectively able to balance a dark intrinsic battle with all the joy that life brings.

The first work on the album, Rites for the Afterlife, uniquely explores what ancient Egyptians believe happens after death. In four movements—“Inscriptions from the Book of the Dead,” “Passage through the Netherworld,” “The Hall of Judgement,” and “The Field of Reeds”—Stacy Garrop’s work allows the listener to follow a soul on the final journey from death to the afterworld. This work was commissioned in 2018 by the Barlow Endowment on behalf of Akropolis Reed Quintet, Calefax Reed Quintet, and the Brigham Young University Reed Quintet.

Kinds of Light by Michael Gilbertson explores light through the dimension of sound and texture, using a variety of contemporary compositional techniques. Elements of post-Minimalism are used by Gilbertson to help generate a sound that aligns with the type of light featured in each movement: “Flicker,” “Twilight,” “Fluorescent,” and “Ultraviolet.” Akropolis has mastered the compositional elements that Gilbertson uses and managed to perfectly balance the instrumentation and match articulation styles across the entire ensemble. This piece, as well as Firing Squad and Seed to Snag, was commissioned by Akropolis and the I-Park Foundation.

Firing Squad was written in 2018 by Iranian composer Niloufar Nourbakhsh. This deeply moving work was inspired by one sentence in the opening of the great literary novel One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Márquez. This piece inspires the listener to go on an emotional journey of being forced to face certain death in front of the firing squad. Many humans will have a similar response when placed in this horrific situation and will quickly travel through an intense flood of memories, feelings, and experiences until their time is extinguished. This piece is unique because at certain times in the recording the composer overlaps a previous recording that Akropolis made to create a blurry or hazy sound, often creating an ethereal backdrop. Firing Squad is beautifully haunting. Feel free to exhale loudly with the ensemble at the end of this piece to release your frustration from the pandemic.

Theo Chandler’s Seed to Snag is another beautiful representation of the life cycle. This well-thought-out piece focuses on the life cycle of organic plant matter, and follows the life of a seed as it moves throughout its cyclical life from “seed to snag.” Chandler uniquely uses traditional Baroque compositional styles, mixed with contemporary elements, to express the journey of a seed to its ultimate rebirth. The first movement, “Sprout,” starts off unfolding and layering parts slowly, like a seed taking in water and sun light over time. Eventually, a root breaks out of the seed with a fast-growing vigor for life. Soon enough, roots are growing everywhere and bursting through the soil and growing towards the sun. The second movement, “Stretch,” features a gorgeous bassoon solo representing the seeds mature growth as a tree. Reaching up to the sky and growing old and majestic. The rest of the ensemble serves as atmospheric growth. In the final moment, “Sow,” the listener can hear seeds falling and spiraling off of the tree. This ultimately aids in the rebirth of a new tree, bringing the life cycle full circle. This uplifting last movement leaves the listener feeling invigorated and energetic.

The final piece on the album is Homage to Paradise Valley, composed by Jeff Scott, with poetry and narration by Detroit native Marsha Music. This piece was written after Scott was on tour with Imani Winds in Detroit. While in Michigan, he visited the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History. The composer was inspired by a museum exhibit that chronicles the lives and treatment of African Americans in the areas of Paradise Valley and Black Bottom. Three of the four movements start with a short reading of poetry written by Marsha Music. Each movement focuses on different aspects of Black Bottom: “Ghosts of Black Bottom,” “Hastings Street Blues,” “Roho, Pumzika Kwa Amani,” and “Paradise Theater Jump.” This piece was commissioned by Akropolis and Chamber Music America. Funding was provided by the Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Program, with additional funding provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Akropolis Reed Quintet’s fourth studio album Ghost Light does not disappoint. The performance standards of Akropolis are award winning for a reason. The ensemble interprets each piece and brings it to life by fully enveloping the literal meaning and purpose the composer intended. No detail is ignored. The ensemble executes musical elements like balance, attacks, articulations, and phrasing flawlessly. This album took several years to complete, with the Akropolis members harnessing their core values and working with multiple nonprofit arts organizations and composers to commission all new works. Their commitment to the creation of new reed quintet repertoire and working with some of the best living composers is commendable. If you haven’t been listening to Akropolis Reed Quintet, now is the time to check out their new album.

— Natalie Szabo, 7.17.2021

Another New Focus Recordings disc with a strong orientation toward instrumental sound features the Akropolis Reed Quintet playing five works intended to explore darkness, light and life cycles. The concept is ambitious and, realistically, more of a hook on which to hang some very different pieces than a fully thought-through theme for the CD. The five composers all show themselves adept at writing for the wind forces available to them here, but none of the works is strongly indicative of the supposed overall theme of the disc. Stacy Garrop’s four-movement Rites for the Afterlife is filled with suitably eerie, film-music-like scene-setting, with occasional solos for individual instruments bursting through what is mostly an ensemble piece that is intended primarily to be serious – although the third movement, The Hall of Judgment, is (unexpectedly in light of its title) almost scherzo-like. Michael Gilbertson’s Kinds of Light is also in four movements – short ones – and manages to reflect (so to speak) the titles rather effectively. Thus, Flicker is full of starts and stops; Twilight is slow-moving and crepuscular; Fluorescence flickers differently from the first movement, with something of an ostinato quality; and Ultraviolet pulsates almost constantly, to the point of annoyance. This is an interestingly interpretative work that, at just nine minutes total, manages not to overstay its welcome. Firing Squad by Niloufar Nourbakhsh is an atmospheric single-movement foray into sound combinations and permutations, featuring varying linear and chordal sections. Theo Chandler’s Seed to Snag includes three movements labeled Sprout, Stretch and Sow, the first giving a good but rather overlong impression of initial striving, the second using the winds effectively to encompass the idea of spreading out, and the third bouncing along brightly with intermittent pauses. The final work on the disc, and the longest by far, is Jeff Scott’s four-movement Homage to Paradise Valley, which incorporates scene-setting poetry by Marsha Music as introductions to the first, second and fourth movements. This is an ambitious work in “social awareness” mode, intended to pay tribute to various onetime African-American communities in Detroit. Like so many other advocacy pieces, it insists on its own importance and basically tells listeners that they ought to care about its topic. This is much less effective than simply creating engaging material to draw in an audience that is not already predisposed to become involved in the subject matter. The readings are fine, but they are far less evocative than Scott’s music – which, however, does not point with any level of specificity to a single city or specific locations within it. Music has inherent representational limits – even works constructed as carefully as Liszt’s symphonic poems tell their stories effectively only to listeners who already know what those stories are – so the issues of Homage to Paradise Valley are nothing new or unusual. But the extreme specificity of Music’s words, dealing as they do with very particular streets and neighborhoods in Detroit, means that only people who are highly knowledgeable about the city – or believe they should be highly knowledgeable about it – will get the full flavor of what Scott is trying to communicate. That is too bad, because the music on its own has many interesting elements, especially in the way it blends the sounds of the wind instruments. Homage to Paradise Valley is more effective as a non-referential woodwind suite than as an insistent tribute to a particular time, place and culture. Although not quite as intriguing as Kinds of Light, it is a satisfactory conclusion to an interestingly varied CD of very well-played contemporary woodwind music.

This is the 2nd CD I’ve heard recently which contains largely forgettable new music, with the exception of incredibly imaginative creations by Michael Gilbertson. The first such album, the Verona Quartet‘s “shatter”, was memorable solely for Gilbertson’s marvelous String Quartet. And what a terrific piece it is. (My review of it appears below on my blog.)

I bought this disc at hand specifically for the new Gilbertson piece. But I was also intrigued by the relatively new phenomenon, the reed quintet – which sets out to reinvent the traditional woodwind quintet by replacing the flute and horn with other reed instruments, a saxophone and bass clarinet, supplementing the retained oboe, bassoon and clarinet. Hence, the reed quintet.

A group of Dutch high school musicians conceived the idea as long ago as 1985, officially creating the first group of its kind, the Calefax Reed Quintet, in 1997. The Detroit-based American group, Akropolis, was formed in 2009 utilizing the same complement of instrumentalists. Calefax has made several records for Pentatone, while Akropolis has 3 thus far, each on a different label. (There is also an earlier digital-download album, and they appear more recently on a vocal album relegated to accompaniment duties.) The CD under review here was released in 2021 on New Focus Recordings. Significantly, it features 5 new works commissioned by/for them.

I love this group and I love their sound. It is blended and textured in a way the traditional woodwind quintet can’t quite achieve. I’ve never heard anything quite like it, actually. Further, each member plays with an individuality which is characterful and enthusiastic. And I appreciate that the group specializes in original, contemporary works written specifically for the genre, while the Dutch group tends to play arrangements, often involving vocalists, on their Pentatone albums (which I have not been inclined to try). I like new music and I especially wanted to hear more from Michael Gilbertson, so I started exploring the genre with Akropolis’s album, “Ghost Light”.

I wish I could be more enthusiastic about the music itself. And I made the mistake of listening to Gilbertson’s piece first – which is so fantastic, it tends to eclipse everything else on the program.

In the opening work, Stacy Garrop doesn’t always sound quite comfortable writing for this particular instrumentation in her Rites For The Afterlife. Its brooding soundscape is determinedly atonal and rather thick and unimaginatively scored. This, along with her penchant for lip slurs, gets tiring real fast. The clarinet and, especially saxophone, play an ongoing series of moaning phrases affected by endless lip slurs. The meager material outstays its welcome even in the opening movement which seems to last longer than its 5-minute playing time.

Hoping for some variety and relief from it, the 2nd movement continues exactly as the first, but now with some punctuated honking accompaniment from the bass clarinet. The 3rd movement picks up, though. It is more agitated and gains much needed momentum. But it almost gets away from itself as Garrop writes some extraordinarily difficult, extremely fast articulated passages which are nearly impractical for reed instruments. I have to give these musicians credit. They just manage to play all those double-tongued notes, though not without the uneasiness of a train about to fly off its tracks. Unfortunately, the music soon degenerates into some screeching lip slurring, now in both directions – up and down.

The lyrical finale, though, is quite wonderful. Aptly named “Field of Reeds”, it is pleasing and heartfelt, conjuring up the wide open spaces of the American Midwest with its melancholy hints of Copland. This was by far the most moving and memorable section of the entire piece.

Skipping over the Gilbertson for a moment, I’ll jump ahead to the 3rd piece on the program, Niloufar Nourbakhsh’s Firing Squad. According to the booklet, the group plays along with a previously recorded version of them playing the piece, “adjusted for effect” to act as a “mirror of acoustic sounds”. Cool. That is certainly novel and piqued my interest. But try as I might, I simply couldn’t hear any such effect on this CD recording. Perhaps that is intended just for live performances. Or maybe I was too distracted by his even more brazen use of lip slurs in all 5 instruments, slowly drawn out and exaggerated for maximum impact. The piece goes on relentlessly for 7-½ minutes with no relief from it. I am at a loss to understand why both these composers would utilize the lip slur so profusely.

Seed to Snag by Theo Chandler sounds much more promising. The first movement, “Sprout”, instantly creates an interesting, otherworldly atmosphere with its use of arpeggiated triads in various instruments. This goes on for quite some time before developing into scalic flourishes, followed by more atmosphere – now with trills replacing tremolos. It’s intriguing but ultimately goes on a little too long. (This movement alone is 7 minutes in length.)

“Stretch” (2nd movement) features the bassoon in what sounds to be a difficult solo, much of it in the highest register, expertly played here by Ryan Reynolds. (No, not that Ryan Reynolds! I was amused when googling the name, even followed by the word “bassoon”, Google still brings up the actor in the search results.) It is but a brief interlude before the final movement, “Sow”, at last reveals some real creative inspiration and purpose from this composer. This is wonderfully inventive and adeptly orchestrated. Chandler uses combinations of instruments, in separate groupings, with interesting underlying accompanying figures, creating rhythmic motivation and musical involvement. The music is interesting, engaging and, at times, positively delightful – brought marvelously to life by these fine musicians. This, along with the Gilbertson piece, is undeniably one of the most outstanding compositional accomplishments of the entire program.

Irritation set in as I attempted to maneuver through to the final work, Homage to Paradise Valley by Jeff Scott. The recording contains poetry readings preceding the 1st, 2nd and 4th movements. I am never a fan of spoken word or narration as part of a music program and was resistant right off the bat. And sure enough, the voice was instantly intrusive and annoying, disrupting the musical program. Making matters worse, there is no detailed track listing for this piece, making it nearly impossible to avoid it. I eventually discovered that the poems are in fact individually tracked, thus one could theoretically program the CD player to skip them. However, without an informative track listing providing the necessary details, it’s very difficult to figure out, especially as the pattern is inconsistent with the absence of a poem preceding just one of the sections.

Exasperated, I would have given up, but persevered for the sake of this review. And I’m glad I did – though I almost didn’t make it through the opening couple of minutes, which is brooding, slow-moving and thickly scored. Just as I was reaching for the stop button on the remote, some shrill oboe trills interrupted the gloom and things began to perk up. What follows is some descriptive, interesting story-telling (and the booklet is helpful in describing what the composer is portraying). There are sections of lively animation – a sort of urban exuberance – alternated with heavy memories weighing it down with more darkness. The movement is surely too long at nearly 10 minutes, but there is sufficient variety to keep it interesting.

The 2nd movement is also a bit depressing with its very long, opening a cappella bass clarinet solo (which goes on for 2 whole minutes). It is expressively played with deeply felt emotion here by Andrew Koeppe, and despite the oppression of it, his gorgeous, textured tone kept me interested. Suddenly, he is joined by others invoking a lively, nightclub atmosphere which had me smiling. Soon though, the music takes us back to some longing nostalgia, including a brief (and quite wonderful) lyrical duet for the oboe and bass clarinet before it’s done. Overall, this movement is varied, imaginative and very enjoyable; another standout of the program.

The 3rd movement (mercifully sans poem) continues with more thoughtful contemplation, featuring a mournful bassoon. Very nice. Then…(quick with the remote to skip the next poem), the 4th movement raises our spirits in a lively and articulate finale filled with jazz and blues licks in an atmosphere reminiscent of the theater. The lip slur makes a brief (and welcome) appearance here, but is incorporated tastefully and appropriately within the context of the music, demonstrating exactly how it should be done! And what an entertaining conclusion to a fascinating and varied piece of music. If not for the intrusive spoken word (which really is unnecessary), I would have enjoyed the piece much more.

Saving the best for last, let’s go back to Michael Gilbertson’s Kinds of Light. I don’t use the word amazing very often, but it is absolutely appropriate here. Ingeniously crafted and expertly scored for this specific instrumentation, it bursts forth with natural inspiration and true creativity. The music is positively energized with vitality – articulate, rhythmic, musically engaging and endlessly varied. Never weighed down with thick, dense tonal clusters, textures are airy, transparent and vivid.

Immediately in the 1st movement, Gilbertson employs groups of 3, then 4, then all 5, to create chordal harmonies even in busy, rhythmic passagework. His 2nd movement is a lyrical ballad imbued with rich harmonies as in choral music. Gilberston has written a lot of choral music and he finds the same blended qualities here with the reed quintet. The 3rd movement is scintillating, with rapid-fire articulation back and forth among the players as if in conversation. The endless variety and descriptive characterization extends into the 4th movement, which opens and closes with hints of minimalism, while its central section erupts into a dazzling display of swing rhythms and jazzy chordal progressions, as if continuing the conversation started in the previous movement. Dave Grusin came to mind here, bringing much pleasure.

This piece is a tour de force, not only for its creativity and imaginative scoring, but also it is the perfect length. And this is important, especially as most of the companion works on this program are decidedly too drawn out for their own good. Gilbertson’s 4 concise, contrasting movements last just under 9 minutes total. It’s like an excellent short story written for maximum engagement and interest – a page-turner one can’t put down until it’s finished. Gilbertson’s Light is the musical equivalent – a wonderful little gem one can listen to again and again, especially as played so brilliantly here.

Considering this program as a whole, much of this music wasn’t instantly gratifying. Moreover, an 80-minute CD of it is rather too much for one sitting. However, I was constantly fascinated by the variety of sounds (when scored that way) and the gorgeous blend produced by this combination of wind instruments. Certainly the Akropolis Reed Quintet makes the strongest possible case for this type of ensemble. They are phenomenal musicians and I admired their playing at every turn.

Finally we come to what is perhaps the most salient characteristic of this CD – the excellent recorded sound engineered by Dave Schall Acoustic for New Focus Recordings. Clean, clear and colorful, it is impressive in its immediacy and realism. Listening to this CD, we don’t just encounter 5 inanimate instruments making sound. Rather, we are placed in the presence of living, breathing humans making real music in a palpable acoustic. Listening attentively, I hear the occasional intake of breath; the faint, but distinct clatter of saxophone keys (and I believe the bass clarinet as well); and the tangible position of each player spread across the stage. As a listening experience in the home environment (provided one has the benefit of a high-quality stereo system), the sound is stunning in its sense of being there.

New Focus Records extends the high production values to the enclosed booklet, chock full of informative and interesting notes about the music, the composers and musicians. And most of all to the amazing cover art, created by UK artist Ashton Springer, which is intriguing and captivating. It literally made me want to buy this CD. I am singularly impressed.

— David Rowe, 8.25.2023