LAKE OF
MUSES
AKROPOLIS
+
STEPHANIE ANN BOYD
Have come together to create Lake of Muses, a new work for Reed Quintet about the history and future of the Great Lakes, premiering summer 2024 at the Chautauqua Institution
LAKE SUPERIOR
LAKE MICHIGAN
LAKE HURON
LAKE ERIE
LAKE ONTARIO
I.
LAKE SUPERIOR
Lullaby
II.
LAKE MICHIGAN
Fantasia
III.
LAKE HURON
Landscape
IV.
LAKE ERIE
Scherzo
V.
LAKE ONTARIO
Rhythmics
When speaking with the fine folks of Akropolis about what this piece should be about, we were torn between wanting to do something Detroit inspired and something Chicago inspired. And the more I thought about what connected these two places and the many spaces between, the more I realized how the Great Lakes inspire and control so, so many aspects of the lives of the folks who life on and around their shores. These lakes are the real muses. So I decided I'd write about them.
about the piece
One of my earliest memories is going on a family trip to the upper peninsula of Michigan and playing in the deep, tall blankets of snow that were courtesy of Lake Superior. One of my favorite memories from childhood is camping with my 6th grade class along the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, being woken up by our teacher at the darkest point of night so that we could leave our tents and go to the shore to see the wide sky and its glowing stars. I spent several summers teaching at a music camp just off the shore of Lake Ontario, and much of my life has played out close to these and the other Great Lakes as I’ve made memories with friends and in communities along their shores.
My undergraduate studies took place literally in the Auditorium Building on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, watching the sunrise over Lake Michigan every morning during 8 am music theory classes, and I spent a great deal of time—especially during those four autumns and springs—in the garden of the Art Institute just basking in the aura of the stunning water fountain, the “Spirit of the Great Lakes Fountain” by Lorado Taft, created between 1907 and 1913. The fountain depicts the five lakes as goddess figures, posed in a way that shows their relative elevations and the flow of water from Lake Superior all the way to Lake Ontario.
Our piece is constructed in a similar manner: in doing my research for this work I was struck at how differently the lakes and the water contained in them behave (Lake Superior’s water retention time is 191 years while Lake Ontario’s is water retention time is 6 years, for example), and how at this point in time, the water becomes drastically more polluted as it flows from west to east as lake flows into lake.
These movements touch on the bits I found most fascinating about these bodies of water, from Lake Superior’s cold depths being so clear due to a lack of organic material in the water/being “oligotrophic”, aka nutrient poor; to all the beauty Lake Michigan has been the canvas and the paint for in my life so far; to Lake Huron’s thousands of thousands of islands and its underwater petrified forest; to Lake Erie’s rust belt communities and fruit belt orchards and vineyards before it crashes through the Niagara Falls into Lake Ontario, whose human-created harmful algal blooms can be seen from space.
I wrote this piece hoping that it could be a fitting portrait work celebrating Akropolis's decade so far of emphatic, heart-felt story-telling and high-speed reeding, from Detroit across the mid-west and beyond. I also hope that it may serve as a connector between the bodies and minds of the people who hear it and these bodies of water whose influence and livelihoods are so connected to our own.
about
AKROPOLIS
Celebrating their 15th year as “a sonically daring ensemble who specializes in performing new works with charisma and integrity” (BBC Music Magazine) and a “collective voice driven by real excitement and a sense of adventure” (The Wire), Akropolis has “taken the chamber music world by storm” (Fanfare). As the first reed quintet to twice grace the Billboard Charts (2021, 2022), the untamed band of 5 reed players and entrepreneurs are united by a shared passion: to make music that sparks joy and wonder.
Winner of 7 national chamber music prizes including the 2014 Fischoff Gold Medal, Akropolis performs “works that brilliantly exploit their unique instrumentation” (Gramophone). Remaining the same 5 members since their founding in 2009, Akropolis delivers 120 concerts and educational events worldwide each year and has premiered and commissioned over 130 works by living artists and composers.
In November 2023 Akropolis will become the first reed quintet to grace the luminary University Musical Society (UMS) stage, and previously have appeared on Oneppo (Yale University), Chamber Music San Antonio, Phillips Collection (Washington, D.C.), Summerwinds Münster (Germany), Flagler Museum (Palm Beach), and many more. The “rise of the reed quintet” (Chamber Music America) and Akropolis’ “infallible musicality and huge vitality” (Fanfare) make them one of the most sought-after chamber ensembles today.
Experimenters and creators at their core, “there’s nothing tentative in their approach, and that extends to their programming of multifariously challenging and imaginative new works” (The Wire). Akropolis has collaborated with poets, a metal fabricator, dancers, small business owners, string quartets, pop vocalists, and more. Currently, Akropolis is collaborating with GRAMMY-nominated pianist/composer Pascal Le Boeuf and drummer Christian Euman on their 6th album and touring program drawing classical and jazz idioms together to reflect on American identity, entitled, Are We Dreaming the Same Dream?
Akropolis’ chief collaborators are youth and their Detroit community. Winner of the 2015 Fischoff Educator Award and a nonprofit organization which has received 7 consecutive grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Akropolis runs a summer festival in Detroit called Together We Sound and holds an annual, school year long residency at Cass Tech, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Detroit School of Arts high schools. Akropolis believes anyone can compose great music and during their 22-23 season premiered and recorded more than 30 works by youth aged 12-22 alone.
An engine perpetually generating new sounds and ideas, Akropolis’ 23-24 season will include world premieres by Derrick Skye and Stephanie Ann Boyd; performances of Are We Dreaming the Same Dream?with 2-time Grammy-nominated composer/pianist Pascal Le Boeuf and drummer Christian Euman; imaginative renditions of music by Ravel and Gershwin; and the release of their 6th full length commercial album on the Bright Shiny Things label.
The “pure gold” (San Francisco Chronicle) Akropolis Reed Quintet performs worldwide and is represented exclusively by Ariel Artists. They come to you with joy and wonder, ready to be unleashed.
about
stephanie
Michigan-born, Manhattan-based American composer Stephanie Ann Boyd (b. 1990) writes melodic music about women’s memoirs and the natural world for symphonic and chamber ensembles. Her work has been performed in nearly all 50 states and has been commissioned by musicians and organizations in 37 countries. Boyd’s five ballets include works choreographed by New York City Ballet principal dancers Lauren Lovette and Ashley Bouder and include a ballet commissioned for the grand opening of the TWA Hotel at JFK Airport. Stephanie’s music has been praised as “a racing, brassy score” (New York Times), “attractive lyricism” (Gramophone), “[with] ethereal dissonances” (Boston Globe), “[music that] didn’t let itself be eclipsed” (Texas Classical Review), and “arrestingly poetic” (BMOP).
Current commissions include a concerto for principal clarinet of the New York Philharmonic Anthony McGill, a new reed quintet for Akropolis, and the second book of Flower Catalog Piano Preludes.
Recent commissions and premieres include a work inspired by Betty Friedan entitled Everywoman, with Kennedy Center President Deborah Rutter, mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung, and 2022 Indianapolis Competition winner Sirena Huang as soloists and commissioned by the Peoria Symphony Orchestra with George Stelluto; Julia Louisa Esther: a Suffragette Symphony commissioned by the Wyoming Symphony Orchestra with Christopher Dragon, the premiere of which was the subject of a documentary on Wyoming PBS in 2022; Alleluia Olora commissioned by Astral Artists for cellist Tommy Mesa; Aurora, commissioned by the Kurganov-Finehouse Duo, and others.
Boyd’s music has been commissioned and performed by concertmasters of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Singapore Symphony, the New York City Ballet Orchestra, the Des Moines Symphony, the Faroe Islands Symphony, the Anchorage Symphony Orchestra, the Fort Smith Symphony, the Arkansas Philharmonic Orchestra, and principal players in the Colorado Symphony Orchestra. Her music has been commissioned and/or played by the Wyoming Symphony Orchestra, the Peoria Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the New England Conservatory Philharmonic, the Cape Cod Chamber Orchestra, the New York Jazzharmonic, the River Oaks Chamber Orchestra, the Detroit Civic Orchestra, the Chicago Youth Symphony, and others.
Stephanie grew up as a violinist in the Ann Arbor, Michigan string world. One of the last students of renowned pedagogue John Kendall, she was a member of the Pioneer High School Symphony Orchestra, the Michigan Youth Symphony Orchestra, and the Blue Lake International Youth Symphony Orchestra.