IN RESIDENCY NOVEMBER 2020

Sandbox Percussion, preparing Andy Akiho’s Seven Pillars for recording at PS21, assisted by the composer and producer/engineer Sean Dixon. The 80-minute work, a genre-defying audio and video collaboration (the quartet commissioned short films by 11 video artists, one for each movement), was released as an album in September 2021. The residency was the culmination of a multi-year journey from concept to concert-ready of this ambitious, seven-member ensemble movement piece that incorporates solos for each musician.

In a livestreamed Zoom session, Sandbox Percussion took viewers behind the scenes of their recording and post-production sessions. Reflecting on the challenge of creating Seven Pillars, Akiho said, “I’ve never taken on a project this ambitious—it’s nearly 80 minutes of music—but I was inspired by the collaborative relationship I have with Sandbox.” Zachary Woolfe in The New York Times noted that thanks to this collective process, Akiho “casts a new kind of spell, a trance experienced by four players at once.”

The New York Times: One Composer, Four Players, ‘Seven Pillars’