This is a striking and dramatic work for saxophone and percussion. It is written in a tonal style, and is a primarily melodic work, with the saxophone taking on the persona of the celebrant of some exotic ritual.

Paul Siskind is on the music faculty of the Crane School of Music at the State University of New York in Potsdam, which is also one of the schools where he was educated. Others are Queens College, Tufts University (where he took an degree in biology) and the University of Minnesota, where he earned his Ph.D.

This impressive 12-minute work does not (mostly) exploit the percussion section's sheer noise-making ability, nor does it usually keep an underlying beat. Rather, it mainly answers the saxophone. For that reason, a lot of the percussion writing is for pitched percussion, or for groups of higher and lower quasi-pitched instruments such as wood blocks of different sizes that can take a quasi-melodic role in the work.

The work is within the tradition of the important French composer André Jolivet (1905 - 1974), who is best known for seeking a sense of ancient of exotic ritual in his music and also on occasion used the combination of a wind solo with percussion to achieve it. However, while Jolivet often erupts into primitive, dance-like fast music, Siskind in this work generally does not have a sense of sustained rhythmic flow.

Rather, his saxophone, always remaining the center of attention in the work (aside for a short passage for percussion only), seems to be pronouncing the words of the ritual. The instant writer fancies that the percussion instruments represent the voice of the crowd, or of the subsidiary celebrants.

The scale patterns used are non-western, and there is some pitch-bending in the saxophone as it calls out. In sum, it is a work with an attractive sense of mystery and strangeness, but not at all avant-garde. Saxophone technique is generally straightforward and traditional.

© Joseph Stevenson, All Music Guide