Sandbox Percussion & Andy Akiho on Chamber Music America
This month, the Sandbox Percussion Summer Seminar, at The New School, celebrated its 10th anniversary. Sandbox Percussion is the College of Performing Arts’ GRAMMY-nominated ensemble-in-residence.
The closing event, on July 22, was a full performance of Andy Akiho’s large-scale Seven Pillars and Portal, with players from the seminar joining Sandbox and Akiho. Seven Pillars is a tremendous 11-part, 80-minute piece for percussion quartet. The New York Times described it as a "brooding, thrilling, Mahler-length taxonomy of noise."
Before the seminar concluded, Orchid McRae, from Chamber Music America, caught up with Sandbox Percussion’s Ian Rosenbaum and composer Andy Akiho to discuss collaboration, education, and developing new repertoire. “This year is particularly special, because the participants are performing the entire Seven Pillars—on their own,” Ian tells her. He goes on:
Our Sandbox Percussion Seminar has been an annual highlight of our schedule. It is one of the busiest weeks we have, but it’s also one of the most rewarding. When we started this group, there weren’t too many people out in the world trying to do this sort of thing—but that’s changing rapidly. It invigorates and inspires us to see so many young people playing chamber music at such a high level. It’s also really, really fun for us to spend time playing music with participants from all over the world. We learn things about this repertoire every year.
Read the full piece here.