Masks, Mirrors, and a Night at The Cube

So here’s the deal: last night The Cube in Blacksburg wasn’t The Cube at all. It was a wormhole disguised as a black box, a dream-tunnel made of sound and reflections. You walk in, and the air’s already vibrating like it knows something you don’t.

Front and center? My friend, Kyle Hutchins. Not just a sax player, an experimentalist sorcerer. A guy who knows the saxophone so well it might as well be tattooed in his DNA. Give him a horn and he’ll give you back a galaxy of voices: whispers from the next room, howls from deep space, sighs that sound like your grandmother’s ghost.

And then, Kendra Wheeler. The first movement wasn’t a solo flight; it was a duet ritual. Kyle and Kendra weaving lines together, trading currents like sonic alchemists, making the air shimmer with tension and release. Kendra’s sound was bold but tender, cutting sharp angles one moment, then melting into Kyle’s phrasing the next. Together, they didn’t just open the piece, they cracked the door to the labyrinth wide, ushering us all inside with both hands.

The spellbook of the night was Charles Nichols’ Masks and Mirrors. This isn’t “music” in the polite cocktail sense. This is masks slipping off, reflections cracking, electronics swirling around like they’ve been released from the basement. The Cube swallowed it all and spat it back out in kaleidoscopic sound, above you, below you, behind you. Stereo? Nah. This was full-body surround hallucination.

And here’s the thing: Kyle, Michelle, and Sheldon are vastly more qualified than me when it comes to music, their ears are wired to the experimental, the nonlinear, the uncharted. I usually hold tighter to the more traditional side of things, the melodies with a spine you can follow. But we’ve circled the big question together: what does it mean to access music that isn’t linear, that refuses tradition’s leash? Is it a door? A mirror? A labyrinth? Last night answered in its own language, and watching Kyle, with Kendra as his co-conspirator in that first movement, bend time and tone turned our debates from philosophy into prophecy.

Kyle was a chameleon. One second molten warmth, the next a fractured shard of light bouncing off the walls. At times he sounded like he was conjuring secrets only the brave could decipher. At others, it was a straight-up throwdown with the electronics, like Coltrane wrestling HAL-9000.

The audience? Half swaying, half pinned to their chairs, everyone basically levitating in their own weird way, except Zak, my 11 years old, who somehow fell asleep. That’s the Blacksburg vibe I love, students, locals, misfits, curious wanderers, all crammed into a box that becomes anything but.

And when the last tones dissolved? Silence. A silence so thick you could’ve scooped it with a spoon. Then applause, sharp, grateful, maybe a little stunned.

Masks fell. Mirrors shattered. And Kyle walked us out the other side, grinning like he knew exactly what he’d just done.