Following his UMS debut last season alongside the Imani Winds, composer and percussionist Andy Akiho returns with his steelpan and the Brooklyn-based ensemble Sandbox Percussion, a quartet that came together in 2011 because of their interest in expanding the percussion repertoire.

This exhilarating ensemble champions living composers through an unwavering dedication to contemporary chamber music and has established a wider audience for classical music through collaborations with leading composers and artists.

For their UMS debut, they’ll perform works by Andy Akiho from their many collaborations, dating back 15 years to when Akiho and Sandbox member Ian Rosenbaum met in graduate school. The program will include bespoke arrangements of Akiho’s earliest works, selections from his Pulitzer Prize-winning composition Seven Pillars, and excerpts from a new large-scale piece, Pentalateral.

Sandbox Percussion “has been expanding the repertoire for their vast array of instruments since 2011,” noted Gramophone, “reveal[ing] both the refined virtuosity the musicians have cultivated and their exceptional taste in choosing composers who write for percussion with vibrant and elegant imagination.”

A pre-concert talk begins at 2:45 pm on the 4th floor of the Rackham building.

Program (all works by Andy Akiho):
Crown Heights
Portal
Longing
Pillar V
Karakurenai
Aka
Pentalateral (excerpts), to be announced by the artists from stage