Sanctuary of Sound

Sanctuary of Sound
What is Sanctuary of Sound?
Sanctuary of Sound is the current project of post-minimalist composer Fergus Currie whose recent CD, Music for Strings featuring the London Chamber Orchestra conducted by Christopher Warren-Green, was met with critical acclaim in his adopted homeland Greece.
The basic idea behind Sanctury of Sound is to create a concert-type space where the audience can escape the stultifying barrage of sound with which we are surrounded everyday from unsolicited sources such as traffic and street noises, loudspeakers in cafes and metro stations and booming car stereos.
The traditional concert atmosphere is usually too contrived to allow the listener to truly find asylum in the music which he or she hears. The aim of Sanctuary of Sound is to change the type environment which prevails at classical concerts, replacing it with a surrounding in which the concert-goer feels relaxed familiar and receptive. The means by which this change is to be realised effect almost every aspect of the currently accepted concert conditions. From comfortable furniture to a refrain from reflex clapping, from a sound production proccess to theatrical dress and lighting, from video projections to personal contact with musicians, Sanctuary of Sound hopes to re-invent the concept of 'concert'.
The music which is being composed for the first concert by Sanctuary of Sound belongs stylistically to a new wave of young composers who have accepted the fact that music need not be complex and elitist, and that there is room for influnces from pop, rock, folk and jazz in today's 'classical' music. The term 'classical' is used hesitantly but there is a need to clarify the space from which audiences of Sanctuary of Sound are escaping.
The photograph used in the our avatar is York station taken by Madeleine Shepherd.