Canyon Wren Recital Hall

Canyon Wren Recital Hall is the jewel of the Icicle Creek Music Center campus, a welcoming but small space that seats 100.

With a sweeping view of Icicle Canyon and the Sleeping Lady Mountain Retreat rock formation, Canyon Wren is designed to bring music and nature together. Designed by the Jones and Jones architectural firm, the hall's design draws from the Music of the Spheres, a theoretical work written by Pythagoras of Samos, the 569 BC mathematician and musician. Pythagoras theorized that the Music of the Spheres is the sound of the planets spinning in harmony with the universe.

Inspired by the spiritual power of music, the architects developed an arrangement that symbolizes the numerology of written music and its correlation to the planets, or spheres, as well as the interplay of light, shadow, and color on structure. Notably, the design incorporates panes of stained glass salvaged from the renovation of the Sleeping Lady Chapel Theater, formerly a Catholic chapel.

Seven colored windows in Canyon Wren represent the planets of our solar system (on the north wall, top to bottom, right to left) Neptune (light blue), Jupiter (red), Saturn (streaky yellow/red), and Venus (purple blue), and (on the south wall, top to bottom) Uranus (very light blue), Earth (light green), and Mercury (cream yellow). Mars (red) is represented in the window wall, and Pluto (dull red and yellow) in the doors at the entry to the hall. The window wall is comprised of 36 panes of glass, which is derived by the combination of 4 (the first perfect female number) and 9 (the first perfect male number, 3x3). This combination of panes represents the Sun.