Soaring all the way from Ypsilanti to Los Angeles to the 67th Grammy Award-winning stage, Eastern Michigan University alum and Akropolis Reed Quintet’s clarinetist Kari Landry looks back on her time at EMU with gratitude.
Landry did not begin her academic career at EMU, but received her bachelor's in Clarinet Performance from the University of Michigan. Then she decided to attend Eastern to get her master's in Arts Administration while simultaneously getting her master's in Clarinet Performance from UM-Ann Arbor.
Dedicated to her home state, Landry returned to the University of Michigan School of Music, Theater, and Dance as an intermediate lecturer teaching Music Entrepreneurial and Leadership courses. She would remain teaching there for the next nine years.
However, during her journey at U-M, in 2009 specifically, Landry co-founded the musical ensemble Akropolis Reed Quintet.
Made up of Andrew Koeppe, bass clarinetist; Ryan Reynolds, bassoonist and lecturer of bassoon at EMU; Kari Landry, clarinetist; Tim Gocklin, oboist; and Matt Landry, saxophonist and Executive Director of Akropolis’ 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and Kari’s husband, which, as Kari Landry disclosed, the seeds of her and Matt’s relationship didn’t bloom until a year after the ensemble was formed.
“We wanted our instrumentation to extend outside of band," Landry said. "So we really just stumbled across some arrangements for reed quintet and were like ‘Hey you want to read this and have some fun?'"
Coming together as a musical group that started as friends first made their dynamic only the more natural, Landry said.
“I really thought I was going to be an art administrator and work for a non-profit organization," Landry said. "But then Akropolis kind of kept taking off. And it’s a business that we’ve built as well. [Akropolis] was always the dream."
The story behind the reed quintet’s name, Akropolis, is a story simple and straightforward.
“It was really just through random Google searching," Landry said. "So it was a completely random and arbitrary word."
On February 2, 2025, Koeppe, Reynolds, Gocklin, and the Landrys were joined by pianist and writer Pascal Le Boeuf and percussionist Christian Euman at the 67th Grammy Awards. They and Akropolis accepted the award for "Best Instrumental Composition for Collaborative Album" for the album "Are We Dreaming The Same Dream?"
They had learned of their nominations earlier that fall while on tour in Oregon, Landry said.
They were up against composers such as Andre 3000 with “I Swear I Really Wanted To Make A ‘Rap’ Album But This Is Literally The Way The Wind Blew Me This Time”; Chick Corea & Béla Fleck with “Remembrance”; Christopher Zuar “Communion”; and Shelly Berg “At Last.”
Yet, leaving California and coming back home to Michigan with a gold-plated gramophone was Akropolis Reed Quintet, Le Boeuf & Euman’s instrumental composition of “Strands,” the sixth track on Akropolis’ sixth album, which they began working on five years earlier.
Recognizing Le Boeuf for his contemporary and jazz-like style combined with Akropolis’ classical aesthetic, it made for the invention of a new genre — a classical jazz mix, Kari Landry said.
Splitting her time as a part-time lecturer, Landry has several other jobs she balances as well. From performer to businesswoman, to mother, she wouldn’t ask for it any other way, she said.
“It’s our own business, we’re our own bosses. We built this company around the five of us as people,” Landry said.
Growing up in a musical household with a bassoon-playing mother and a father who played the French horn, it was of no surprise Landry was also drawn to the art of music.
Momentarily lost in thought, Landry’s eyes drift to the side as she relives a memory, “He [Landry’s father] played in Motown in Detroit, playing on Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder recordings and so music was in my house. Everywhere.” Adding, “I think that from a young age, I knew I was going to play something in music and the clarinet just kind of stuck when I was exposed to it [at 11 years old]. I really liked it, and it was something neither of my parents played so it was new and different,” Landry said.
After receiving recommendations to check out EMU’s Arts Admin program, Landry met with Susan Booth, a professor of the School of Communication, Media and Theatre Arts and Program Director of Arts and Entertainment Management/Arts Administration.
Describing this interaction as life-changing, Landry credits Booth for recognizing that Akropolis could be a non-profit organization. Right then and there, it was confirmation she was going to enroll at Eastern, she said.
Sharing some of her experience as an Eagle, Landry said, “I was involved in the AMP! program, which is a student arts organization that puts on events. So just being in a room with so many other arts organizers was incredibly inspiring because I got to see firsthand how the arts impact the community.”
While wearing the green and white, Landry was able to see how Akropolis had the potential to be more than just a music group, recalling her time at the University as eye-opening.
Today, Akropolis is beyond its art. Doubling as a non-profit organization, Akropolis has 120 concerts and educational events worldwide each year and has premiered and commissioned more than 150 works by artists and composers, according to the Akropolis Reed Quintet website.
“We have a residency at three high schools in Detroit and have been doing that for about eight or nine years. The students there work with us throughout the year, and they write pieces for us that we record and premiere around the world,” Landry shares.
That’s not all; they also put on a summer festival in Petoskey, Michigan called the Akropolis Chamber Music Institute as well as other programs committed to community and education work, she said.
“I get as much enjoyment out of running the organization as I do performing because I see how the two feed each other very, very well.”
To maintain this attitude, Landry works on passion projects to ensure the work she does continues to fuel her greater purpose.
“I do it all because it gives me a beautiful, flexible, fulfilling life where I can be a world-touring clarinetist, but also I get to do that with my family and be a mom at the same time,” Landry said.
Keep an ear out for Akropolis's next collaboration with Jennifer Higdon, a classical American composer with three Grammy wins and a Pulitzer Prize for Music. This piece can be expected to be released in 2026. Recording for their next album will begin in the summer of 2025.
More information for tickets, events, and programs can be found on the Akropolis Reed Quintet website.
