Sandbox Percussion on Andy Akiho's Seven Pillars: Interactive Zoom Event

Join PS21: Performance Spaces for the 21st Century in Chatham Sunday, November 8 at 2 pm ET for a free interactive live Zoom event with Sandbox Percussion on Andy Akiho's Seven Pillars.

While in residency to record this work at PS21, the musicians of Sandbox Percussion will take you behind the scenes of this recent recording project and the post-production process, playing some unreleased excerpts from their sessions and giving a sneak peek into the multi-year process of commissioning, composing, learning, and finally recording this huge work. You'll also be able to ask them questions live, take part in the discussion, and meet fellow audience members.

This week at the PS21 residency, Sandbox Percussion, composer Andy Akiho, and engineer Sean Dixon have been recording Andy's 75-minute work Seven Pillarsfor a commercial release in 2021. The world premiere of this piece was supposed to take place last April at the Mondavi Center in CA -- it was cancelled due to COVID.

Seven Pillars by Andy Akiho has been made possible by the Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Program, with generous funding provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Chamber Music America Endowment Fund.

The work consists of seven ensemble movements and one solo for each member of Sandbox. The piece is designed such that each movement flows continuously into the next without pause.

In Seven Pillars, Akiho has created new timbres on well-known instruments (a glockenspiel is played with timbale sticks, giving it a hyper-articulate attack with bell-like resonance), as well as write music for found sounds and unorthodox instruments (a chromatic octave of tuned ceramic rice bowls played with chopsticks). Akiho wrote Pillar IV, one of the ensemble movements, as well as the glockenspiel solo, in 2014. This is his first extended work for percussion instruments alone.

To register for this free event, visit here.

To watch WMHT'sAHA! A House for Arts program on PS21 watch below or stream here.