Percussion As The Last "Instrumental Frontier" - The Most Varied And Least-Codified Resource For Acoustic Music (Not Coming To Public Radio WETA/WGMS)

"Roger Reynold's Sanctuary is in three movements, an evening length performance of about 1 hour:

I. Chatter/Clatter - for solo percussionists Steve Schick
II. Oracle – for red fish blue fish percussion quartet
III. Song – for red fish blue fish percussion quartet

The concert, on November 18, 2007, will be preceded by a lecture by Roger at 6:30 PM in the National Gallery of Art auditorium on the concourse level of the East Wing. Late entry or reentry of the building after 6:30 p.m. is not permitted.

• Reynolds' work utilizes the collaging and computer transformation of musical sounds as well as those from the natural world. His work often features choreographic sound distribution. Reynolds has frequently been involved in collaborative interactions as composer and sounddesigner for theater, video, and dance events.

• In the Atrium of the East Wing we will have unique seating arrangements on all floors of the Gallery. As a component of the non-traditional viewpoints into the performance, we will add an aspect of audience migration during the piece so that listeners will observe the performance from differing perspectives, creating varying aural and visual perceptions.

• Reynolds’ work utilizes the computer’s technological capacity through the digitization of information, to bring about novel combinations, distributions and transformations of sound materials. Roger has been working with an exceptional team of programmers from UCSD and McGill University for four years to develop the software for Sanctuary.

• Percussion is the last "instrumental frontier", the newest, most varied, and least-codified resource for acoustic music. Sanctuary speaks to the codification of this new medium by summoning the image and the standards of the string quartet: music with a high level of scale and aspiration. Steve Schick is recognized world-wide as one of the leading proponents of new music for percussion."

– Steve Antosca and Roger Reynolds introducing The Sanctuary Project October 2007













Alexander Calder, one of whose beloved sculptures is pictured above, was lucky that he was an American visual artist whose works are prized by the National Gallery of Art, in Washington, D.C.; as opposed to an American composer, whose works are largely banned from the airwaves of WETA/WGMS, public radio, in the Nation's Capital.

Photo credit: (c) National Gallery of Art. 2007. All rights reserved. Via the NGA Press Office. With thanks.