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Andy Akiho’s landmark percussion work Seven Pillars, first performed in 2021, extends the scope of percussion composition across 11 movements that embrace varied global and traditional musical influences. Performed at the Forbidden City Concert Hall by Sandbox Percussion, for whom the piece was written, Seven Pillars was an undoubted festival highlight.

I’ve come to regard these four young men as the foremost interpreters of my percussion music. And I welcomed the invitation to compose Prophecies of Fire — a concert-length work specifically for them.

A New York quartet of players who make unusual sounds with unconventional instruments.

In early fall 2021, I watched this quartet rehearse Andy Akiho’s ‘Seven Pillars,’ a brooding, thrilling, Mahler-length taxonomy of noise that Sandbox had already captured on a vivid recording. But it wasn’t until nearly two years later, in June at Caramoor, that I finally saw these four musicians burn through the Akiho, in a spectacle of flashing lights and constant motion.

Sandbox Percussion’s multiple versions of Jason Treuting’s ‘extremes’ are an awesome example of how a great composition can renew itself with each interpretation.