Show artwork for Summer Soirée
Special Event

Summer Soirée

Summer Soirée

Saturday, June 15, 2024—7:00pm

Saturday, June 15, 2024—7:00pm
Orchestra Hall
4 hours
Tickets start at {{ vm.min_price_formatted }}

Party with Purpose: Champion the soundtrack of Detroit.
Summer Soiree supports the DSO’s vision to ensure all people can experience their world through music.

The evening will begin at 5:30 p.m. with a private sponsor only pre-glow in the Herman and Sharon Frankel Donor Lounge. Guests will move to the legendary Orchestra Hall for a concert featuring Grammy-nominated duo, Black Violin with our incredible Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Following the concert will be a lively afterparty, themed Glitter and Glam! The party will feature a strolling dinner, arcade games, craft cocktail bars, live performers and so much more! 

For questions about this event, please contact Ali Huber, Director of Donor Engagement, 313.576.5449.

Event Tickets:
All tickets include preferred seating for the concert, entry to the afterparty, and complimentary valet parking.
-Premier Ticket (Box Level Seating, limited availability) $400
-Ticket (Main Floor Seating) $250

Sponsorship Opportunities:

PRESENTING SPONSOR $35,000
-Recognition as Presenting Sponsor on invitation and promotions
-Verbal recognition as Presenting Sponsor during concert program
-Your logo projected on digital screens throughout the event
-Box level seating for 20 at Summer Soiree Concert
-Admission for 20 to Soiree strolling dinner and afterparty
-Valet parking

DINNER SPONSOR $25,000
-Recognition as Dinner Sponsor on invitation and promotions
-Verbal recognition as a Dinner Sponsor during concert program
-Your logo projected on digital screens throughout the event
-Admission for 12 to Soiree strolling dinner and afterparty
-Box level seating for 12 at Summer Soiree Concert
-Valet parking

DANCE SPONSOR $15,000
-Recognition as Dance Sponsor on invitation and promotions
-Your logo projected on digital screens throughout the event
-Your logo on stage and dance floor signage
-Admission for 10 to Soiree strolling dinner and afterparty
-Box level seating for 10 at Summer Soiree Concert
-Valet parking 

COCKTAIL SPONSOR $10,000
-Recognition as Cocktail Sponsor on invitation and promotions
-Your logo projected on digital screens throughout the event
-Admission for 8 to Soiree strolling dinner and afterparty
-Box level seating for 8 at Summer Soiree Concert
-Valet parking

DJ SPONSOR $5,000
-Recognition as DJ Sponsor on invitation and promotions
-Your logo projected on digital screens throughout the event
-Admission for 6 to Soiree strolling dinner and afterparty
-Main floor premier seating for 6 at Summer Soiree Concert
-Valet parking 

PARTY SPONSOR $2,500
-Recognition as Party Sponsor on invitation and promotions
-Your logo projected on digital screens throughout the event
-Admission for 4 to Soiree strolling dinner and afterparty
-Main floor premier seating for 4 at Summer Soiree Concert
-Valet parking

Artists

Tim Davies

conductor

Tim Davies leads a very busy musical life. Born and educated in Australia, now based in Los Angeles, the Grammy-nominated and Annie-winning musician splits his time between orchestrating for features, television, and video games; composing his own scores; and conducting and arranging for orchestras all around the globe.

His film and TV credits as lead orchestrator and/or conductor include Frozen and Frozen 2, all three Ant-Man movies, The Bob’s Burgers Movie, Shazam: Fury of the Gods, The Lego Movie 2, La La Land, Trolls, The Peanuts Movie, The Croods: A New Age, Free Guy, and WandaVision. He also has numerous conducting and orchestration credits in the world of video games, having worked on multiple titles from the God of War, Infamous, Sims, Ratchet and Clank, Resistance and Batman franchises, Marvel’s Spider-man, The Last of US, and Halo: Infinite. A full list of credits can be found on IMDB. He is currently lead orchestrator for Christophe Beck, Mark Mothersbaugh, and Fil Eisler. When not on the scoring stage, Davies can be found on the podium conducting orchestras in concert halls and other live venues specializing in film scores live to picture. Recent engagements include the Blackstar Symphony featuring Donny McCaslin with the Charlotte Symphony and Aladdin with the Evergreen Orchestra in Taiwan.

Davies has also scored several high-profile projects himself. He has special relationships with Mexican directors Jorge Gutierrez and Guillermo del Toro. He recently scored Gutierrez’s Maya and the Three, receiving the Annie Award for best score, and previously collaborated with two-time Oscar winner Gustavo Santaolalla to score The Book of Life. He also received an Annie nomination for his work scoring Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia, executive produced by del Toro, and contributed additional music for Crimson Peak. In 2019 del Toro asked him to produce and conduct a concert of scores from his movies with the Jalisco Philharmonic in his home town of Guadalajara, Mexico. Their most recent collaboration was the first episode, Lot 36, of the anthology series Cabinet of Curiosities. Some of his collaborations with Gustavo Sanaolalla from The Last of Us can be heard in HBO’s adaptation of the game.

Davies is an active pop and jazz arranger as well. Highlights include arranging and playing drums for the twentieth anniversary concert of NAS’ Illmatic and being lead arranger for Kendrick Lamar’s performance of To Pimp a Butterfly, both featuring the National Symphony at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. Other collaborations with the NSO have included shows with Ledisi, Common, Maxwell, Kenny ‘Babyface’ Edmonds and Ne-yo. He enjoys a close relationship with the Metropole Orchestra in the Netherlands and has recently written for concerts featuring Donny McCaslin, Cory Henry, and Ibeyi. He has contributed arrangements for several recent BBC Proms concerts including concerts for Moses Sumney and Paul Weller. He has been on the arranging team for the several Academy Awards Ceremonies and has written string arrangements for Amy Winehouse, Miguel, Cee Lo Green, Akon and most recently Robbie Williams’ album “25.” His own group, the 18-piece Tim Davies Big Band, has received two Grammy nominations for Best Instrumental Composition.

In 2013 he launched his orchestration blog, www.debreved.com, which has since become an important resource for composers and orchestrators.

Black Violin

“We had a wall that we wrote stuff on,” says Wil Baptiste, describing the process that led to Black Violin’s new album, Take the Stairs. “We had all the ideas about what story we were going to convey. And it kept coming back to the idea of hope—songs that spoke about going against the grain, carrying through struggle, being optimistic. We wanted to say, ‘it’s tough now, but hang in there.’”

Much like the ways their instruments interact on stage, Wil’s creative collaborator Kev Marcus echoes this theme, and then expands it. “Hope is the thread that keeps this thing together, it’s the heartbeat of this album,” he says. “But then a lot of tentacles went different ways—the song ‘Impossible is Possible’ is about challenging people. So it went different directions from just being hopeful, we took it a little further.”

The first single released ahead of Take the Stairs was the timely and inspiring “Dreamer,” with a message that was immediately embraced by several commercial campaigns. “This is the day when I go all the way/I make it my own/Here’s to the dreamers,” sings Wil. “That just really hit home,” says Kev. “It got to the heart of what we’re about.”

For more than a dozen years, Black Violin has been all about taking things further, exceeding expectations, challenging conventions. The classical-meets-hip-hop duo has steadily built a devoted following and a diverse touring base, while occupying a musical lane that’s entirely its own.

“When you do something you love, it’s not difficult,” says Wil. “I’m just going on stage and being who I am. When people want to listen, when you touch them and make them want to keep fighting—to see that spreading out to more people, it’s about way more than just the music.”

Indeed, Black Violin’s work extends far beyond the stage, reaching deep into urban communities with numerous free performances for students and hands-on engagement with youth symphonies and community centers. Through the TurnAround Arts program, Wil and Kev connect with more than 100,000 students throughout the year, mostly at low-income and Title 1 schools, and adopted Bethune Elementary, in Florida’s Broward County (near where they grew up) to initiate an ongoing mentorship program.

Wil expresses the idea that, no matter how unique Black Violin’s music may be, it is ultimately more than just a creative enterprise. “It’s really a movement,” he says, “an organism that’s its own thing and really feels necessary.”

With Take the Stairs, Black Violin are striving to take their message of unity and inclusiveness even further, moving Wil’s vocals further forward while continuing to explore the possibilities of merging classical virtuosity and structure with modern beats and tones. “We wanted something different, beautiful songs that could go to radio,” says Wil. “I sing every night, so that’s nothing new, but we felt like we’ve never had that one song that can help elevate us to the next level. This album has records like ‘One Step’ that can appeal to everybody, so we lean a bit more on that, but we still had to keep that quintessential Black Violin sound.”

“When you’re a creative musician,” adds Kev, “when you press record, you let the music lead you. The vocals have definitely stepped up each time—Wil becomes more of a vocalist on each album and finds his voice a little more. It solidifies us as artists, too, trying to make a bigger stamp.”

The members of Black Violin first met in Ft. Lauderdale, and played together in the orchestra at the Dillard High School of the Performing Arts. (Baptiste originally wanted to play saxophone in the band, but the orchestra teacher got him assigned to his class by winning a golf bet with the band instructor.) Classically trained by day, they faithfully put on their headphones and listened to the hottest rap records each night. They went to different colleges—Marcus attended Florida International University and Wil B went to Florida State—but then reconvened, moved into an apartment together, and started trying to produce other musicians.

They developed an act covering hip-hop songs on their violins, which became popular in local clubs. Two years after sending in a tape to Showtime at the Apollo, they were invited to appear on the show—which they won, and kept winning.

They were approached by the manager of Alicia Keys, who asked them to perform with the singer on the Billboard Awards. Other offers followed—they toured with Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park, opened for the Wu-Tang Clan, scored an episode of CSI: New York. Individually and together, Wil and Kev have worked with everyone from Kanye West to Tom Petty, Lupe Fiasco to Aerosmith. All the while, Black Violin continued touring non-stop (playing as many as 200 shows a year) and released two independent, self-financed albums before putting out the acclaimed Stereotypes in 2016.

The 13 tracks on Take the Stairs reveal the range and diversity of their influences and vocabulary, from “Showoff” (which Wil calls a “classic instrumental”) to the Curtis Mayfield-inspired “Lost in the Garden.” One favorite is “A Way Home”—“That record should be the Olympics theme song!,” says Wil. “I can see us going from country to country, engaging with different cultures. I played it for my wife and she started crying—that’s a special song right there.”

Kev notes that “inspiration can come from anywhere—the cable guy played me an Ethiopian tune when he was fixing my modem.” He points to the track “Al Green” as an example of the journey that Black Violin songs can take. “I had a Dvorak piece called ‘Slavonic Dancers’ and I was into that vibe,” he says. “I played it for Salaam Remi [who has worked with the likes of Nas, Amy Winehouse, and the Fugees, and co-produced and is featured on several Take the Stairs tracks] and he said ‘That has a cool bounce to it—let’s funk out that groove and put an Al Green-style bass line on it. We both played violas over that, which I’d never heard. So that one is funk mixed with a Czech Slavonic dance, with an Al Green sample and viola solos.”

The members of Black Violin both point to their own personal evolution and maturity, and to the ways this growth came out on Take the Stairs. “This time, every I is dotted and T is crossed,” says Kev. “There was a rush to the last album, a deadline we had to hit after we signed our record deal. This one we funded and produced ourselves, then shopped the record. So it was a really well-thought out and more deliberate process; we had more time to live with everything and feel comfortable with it.”

Wil says that Black Violin isn’t always explicit with its message, but that they don’t have to be—that the creation of an audience that is multi-generational, ethnically and economically diverse, is a powerful statement of its own. “The stereotypes are always there, embedded so deep in our culture,” he says. “Just by nature of our existence—the Idea that these black guys who could be football or basketball players are playing the violin—we challenge those ideas. It’s a unique thing that brings people together who aren’t usually in the same room, and in the current climate, it’s good to bring people together.”

It’s all wrapped up in the name of the album. “For sixteen years, we’ve slowly been taking the stairs,” says Kev. “It’s a gradual kind of snowball where now we have control, we can tour in Alaska—we took the hard way for so many years, now we can look back and see what we’ve learned.

“You’ve got to work hard to get what you want. But you shouldn’t be looking for the easy way, anyway, because the hard way is where the real lessons are.”

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