Citadel (2015)

Commissioned by Alden Toevs

Written for Synergy Percussion in celebration of its 40th anniversary

As part of the “40 under 40” Commissioning Project

Team

Two Percussionists

Preface

Objective: to create a game where two percussionists strategize to win.  Citadel is my second game piece for percussion duet, a sequel to my 2014 work Theseus and the Minotaur.  In Citadel, the two players engage in a classic game of “capture the flag”: each player moves on a game board by choosing a sequence of small percussion instruments placed on a grid, calculating the best path to steal the other player’s “flag”.  The first player to return the flag to home base triumphantly sounds the gong to win the game.
Citadel was commissioned for Synergy Percussion’s 40th anniversary, as part of its 40-Under-40 Project.  Synergy Percussion created a video version of the work by Nick Alexander that presents Citadel backwards (see video above).  This short film begins with one of the players winning the game and ends with the dice roll.

Synergy Percussion premiered the work on December 8, 2017 in Sydney, Australia.