Alex Richard
Alex Richard is a professor and freelance percussionist based in Winston-Salem, NC. She currently serves as the Marching Percussion Instructor for the Elon University Marching Band, and as an Adjunct Instructor at High Point University, where she teaches drumset and percussion lessons, courses in Musicianship and the History of American Music, and assistant directs the HPU Percussion Ensemble. Her research interests include historical intersections of popular music and contemporary classical music, and as an advocate for new music, Alex regularly commissions and joins consortium efforts for new and exciting percussion works. When not teaching, she spends her free time baking, reading, and hanging out with her small gray cat, Bubbles.
Silence Must Be!
Session Description:
Thierry De Mey’s Silence Must Be! is a piece for solo conductor. The piece plays with De Mey’s idea of movement at the heart of musical “fact.” The score dictates specifically timed hand motions to show polyrhythm and gesture through spatial relationships. First, movements are performed in silence,. then some are repeated with sound. The body drives the rhythm as it would in any percussion piece, but the spatial relationship of each motion leads the listener to perceive rhythm visually rather than aurally. After several sequences of gestures (including a direct reference to De Mey’s Table Music, 1987), the sonic element enters to reinforce previous gestures. The composer leaves the elements of sound open to the performer(s). Performed as part of PASIC 2025 New Music/Research Focus Day.
Session Category:
- New Music/Research
Date:
Thursday, November 13, 2025
Time:
9:00 AM
Location:
Room 120
Session Type:
New Music/Research Presents
Session Format:
Live
