Q&A: Contemporary Music Forum's Steve Antosca

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IN ADDITION to presenting regular concerts by the Verge Ensemble at the Corcoran Gallery, the Contemporary Music Forum now has a hand in spreading modern music all over town under the guidance of Steve Antosca, the group's director and a composer and performer of electronic music himself. The Forum's next project is the world premiere of Roger Reynolds' "Sanctuary," a piece for percussion and electronics so vast it will take the National Gallery of Art's East Atrium to hold it.

» EXPRESS: How receptive do you think D.C. is to modern music in general?
» ANTOSCA: Right now, not very receptive. That's one of the important reasons we're doing it. It isn't just to fill a niche; it’s an educational mission. We want to be able to say, "This is very well-performed, very well-presented music, at the highest level." ... There's an emphasis on bringing really cutting-edge music, difficult to perform and sometimes difficult to listen to.

» EXPRESS: The CMF mixes music that features electronics and music that doesn't. That's unique among local programs.
» ANTOSCA: It really is. If you go to any conservatory, any music school anywhere else in the world, people are performing both very modern acoustic music [and] lots of electro-acoustic music. So we like to have a pretty even balance.

» EXPRESS: The Reynolds piece sounds like a substantial undertaking.
» ANTOSCA: It's a huge undertaking. Roger's been working on the software development for, I think, four years, and they've had a couple of performances of parts of the pieces before, and 've been talking to the Gallery for years about the logistics and raising the money to do it.

» EXPRESS: Was "Sanctuary" composed with a performance in the Atrium in mind?
» ANTOSCA: Well, it's really a malleable piece in that it can be presented in different spaces. But what we're doing on the 18th, really, is designed for that space. We did a mock-up in the spring of where to place speakers, where the performers would be, where all the seating is going to be. We did some acoustical tests to see how long sound resonates in the space. We've done things like time the elevators, because those will be used in some way.

» EXPRESS: But the technology is modifying sound that's being created by the percussionists.
» ANTOSCA: Exactly. There will be some sound capture and playback, but it's all live performance. Everything is written out, but there's a fair amount of flexibility, and the performers have some choices of things they can do. There are some traditional percussion instruments there and also some other instruments referred to as "oddities" that are being used. It's going to be a sonic adventure on a lot of different levels.

» National Gallery of Art, 600 Constitution Ave. NW; Sun.,6:30 p.m., free; 202-737-4215. (Archives-Navy Mem'l)

Interview by Express contributor Andrew Lindemann Malone