We needed to get an early begin to determine the right way to ergonomically squeeze all of Sandbox Percussion’s devices behind the Tiny Desk.
The band deploys a surprisingly huge arsenal. The professionally-built devices, just like the bass drum and vibraphone, took up a lot of the Tiny Desk actual property. The smaller, sudden devices wanted to be positioned excellent for straightforward entry. There have been steel plumbing pipes and wood slats you will discover on the ironmongery store, abnormal wine glasses out of your kitchen, an outdated cigar field and an empty bourbon bottle.
The members of Sandbox Percussion have a longstanding relationship with composer Andy Akiho. They start this set with a phase of Seven Pillars, an 80-minute piece Akiho wrote for the group, which was a 2022 Pulitzer Prize finalist. It is a supercharged, edge-of-the-seat efficiency the place the sounds delight, the polyrhythms intertwine and mallets fly in a blur.
Then come the wine glasses. Keep in mind, as a child, the way you irritated your loved ones by working your finger across the rim of a water glass on the dinner desk? The Sandbox guys take this to an beautiful degree in music by Viet Cuong. The glasses, tuned with various ranges of water, toll woozily, as if bells may get drunk. Later, they “sing” with otherworldly overtones, sounding higher than any synthesizer.
As a bonus, Sandbox invitations Akiho himself to affix on metal drum for the mesmerizing remaining piece –- Akiho’s personal Karakurenai, the place interlocking beats groove like gamelan music, and scrumptious sounds emanate from bowed rice bowls, pipes and slabs of wooden.
Ultimately, it was value unloading all these wonderful devices to doc certainly one of right this moment’s most interesting — and friendliest — percussion ensembles.
SET LIST
- Andy Akiho: Pillar III
- Viet Cuong: Water, Wine, Brandy, Brine
- Akiho: Karakurenai
MUSICIANS
- Ian Rosenbaum: percussion
- Jonathan Allen: percussion
- Victor Caccese: percussion
- Terry Sweeney: percussion
- Andy Akiho: metal drum
TINY DESK TEAM
- Producer: Tom Huizenga
- Director: Joshua Bryant
- Audio Technical Director: Josh Newell
- Host/Collection Producer: Bobby Carter
- Videographers: Joshua Bryant, Sofia Seidel, Grace Raver
- Video Editor: Kara Body
- Audio Engineer: Josephine Nyounai
- Manufacturing Assistants: Ashley Pointer, Dora Levite
- Photographer: Mhari Shaw
- Tiny Desk Workforce: Maia Stern, Lars Gotrich
- Govt Producer: Suraya Mohamed
- Collection Creators: Bob Boilen, Stephen Thompson
- VP, Visuals and Music: Keith Jenkins
