NY Times
By Zachary Woolfe
Andy Akiho’s 11-part, 80-minute new work for percussion quartet is a lush, brooding celebration of noise.
Andy Akiho, center, wrote “Seven Pillars” for Sandbox Percussion (from left: Terry Sweeney, Ian David Rosenbaum, Jonny Allen and Victor Caccese).Credit...Nathan Bajar for The New York Times
The industrial stretch of south Brooklyn where Sandbox Percussion makes its home was nearly silent on a cool, clear Sunday afternoon at the end of September. Not so inside, where the Sandbox quartet had put in earplugs to rehearse Andy Akiho’s clangorous “Seven Pillars,” a lush, brooding celebration of noise.
Akiho, 42, an increasingly in-demand composer who rose as a steel pan virtuoso, sat watching, with a surfer’s laid-back demeanor but intently focused. He isn’t part of the group, but over the years has grown so close with its members, and has spent so much time in their studio, that he installed an espresso machine to fuel his work marathons there.
“That’s my bedroom,” he said, pointing to a tiny soundproofed recording space walled off in the corner.
Akiho has written substantial works for steel pan, for percussion, for marimba and string quartet, for snare drum and sampled dog barking, and many other configurations — even a concerto for onstage Ping-Pong players and orchestra. But “Seven Pillars” is a breakthrough for him, in its 80-minute length and its conceptual complexity.
It is being unveiled as a live theatrical event staged by Michael McQuilken, with striking lights synchronized with the music, in Seattle on Friday, and will tour in the coming years, including to the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York in April. But because of the pandemic, it was first released in September as a recording, with accompanying short films. The album has been nominated for two Grammy Awards: One of the categories, best contemporary classical composition, specifically honors Akiho, and the other, best chamber music/small ensemble performance, Sandbox Percussion.
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