GRAMMY® Win

Don’t Look Down Wins GRAMMY® Award for Best Engineered Album, Classical

Sandbox Percussion’s 2025 album Don’t Look Down, featuring music by longtime collaborator Christopher Cerrone, received the GRAMMY® Award for Best Engineered Album, Classical at the 68th Annual GRAMMY Awards. The award recognized the extraordinary work of engineer Mike Tierney and mastering engineer Alan Silverman, whose immersive and meticulously crafted production brought the album’s expansive sonic world vividly to life.

Released on Pentatone, Don’t Look Down is the culmination of more than a decade of collaboration between Sandbox Percussion and Cerrone. Spanning works composed between 2015 and 2023, the album explores the intersection of percussion, electronics, voice, prepared piano, and found sound through music that is both experimental and emotionally resonant. The recording features pianist Conor Hanick and mezzo-soprano Elspeth Davis as featured collaborators.

Praised by BBC Music Magazine for its ability to “stretch and challenge the listeners’ ears” while remaining compelling and accessible, Don’t Look Down reflects Sandbox Percussion’s ongoing commitment to expanding the possibilities of contemporary chamber music through close artistic collaboration and adventurous programming.

About the Album

Opening with the title work Don’t Look Down, a piece born during the pandemic, the album blends prepared piano, resonant percussion textures, and unconventional sound objects into a strikingly cinematic landscape. When premiered by Sandbox Percussion and Conor Hanick, the work was described by The New York Times as “exhilarating.”

Other featured works include A Natural History of Vacant Lots, a meditation on ambient space and electronic color, and Goldbeater’s Skin, a large-scale setting of poetry by GC Waldrep that pairs percussion quartet with voice. The album closes with Ode to Joy, a bittersweet celebration of New York City filled with whistles, harmonicas, stomping grooves, and layered percussion sonorities.

Every sound on the album was carefully shaped through the close collaboration between Cerrone and producer Mike Tierney, whose engineering approach captured the extraordinary range of timbres and details demanded by the scores — from delicate metallic resonances to explosive rhythmic textures.

From Sandbox Percussion

“We’re thrilled to share the great news that our 2025 album Don’t Look Down, featuring music by our friend and longtime collaborator Chris Cerrone, won a GRAMMY® Award for Best Engineered Album, Classical at the 68th Annual GRAMMY Awards.

A huge congratulations to the winners — Mike Tierney, the album’s engineer, and Alan Silverman, the mastering engineer — whose incredible ear and technical artistry made the album sound crisp, expansive, and vibrant. Mike and Alan beautifully captured the brilliance of Chris’ music and the remarkable variety of percussion sounds, rhythms, melodies, grooves, and textures his scores call for.

Thank you to our fans, Chris, the Pentatone label, all voting members, and especially Mike and Alan for their extraordinary work on this recording, which has become a highlight of our recording career to date.

If you’re new to Sandbox, or to Chris’ music, Don’t Look Down is a wonderful place to begin. Chris, with whom we’ve collaborated for more than 10 years, writes captivating music for traditional and unorthodox instruments, invents new playing techniques, and seamlessly blends acoustic and electronic sound worlds. We’re honored to share this music with listeners everywhere.”

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Learn more about the album here.

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