Walker Art Center & Schubert Club Mix present
Andy Akiho's
Seven Pillars
Performed by Sandbox Percussion
Wednesday, November 29, 2023
8:00 pm
McGuire Theater
Seven Pillars
Music
ANDY AKIHO
Performed by
SANDBOX PERCUSSION
Stage Direction & Lighting Design
MICHAEL JOSEPH MCQUILKEN
Sandbox Percussion is represented worldwide by BLU OCEAN ARTS
For more information, please visit www.sandboxpercussion.com
WARNING: This performance features strobe lights, and could potentially trigger seizures for people with photosensitive epilepsy.
Program
Seven Pillars by Andy Akiho explores the free spaces created within an organized structure. This evening-length work, comprising seven quartets and four solos, began with its central movement, Pillar IV. Originally commissioned as a stand-alone work, this piece contained a rigorous structure and motivic content that Akiho felt compelled to expand beyond its 10-minute capsule. Pillar IV became the nucleus for Seven Pillars, containing the DNA from which the other six quartets are built.
The macro-structure of Seven Pillars is made up of two simultaneous processes. The first is an additive process where each movement introduces a new instrument that is then incorporated into the subsequent pillars. To balance this expansion, there is a symmetrical structure on either side of the central movement, Pillar IV.
The reflecting movements—Pillars I & VII, Pillars II & VI, Pillars III & V—share formal elements, motives, pitch sets, and other musical elements, but Akiho is the first to say that this is not the point of Seven Pillars. Rather, this structure creates space that can be populated with emotion and imagination. Even the reflecting movements are occupied by wildly different aesthetics despite sharing an underlying logic. While still observing the macro-structure, these free spaces are first seen in the solo movements. The solos have a more improvisatory form, elaborating on the pillars, going off on tangents, or transporting us to somewhere else entirely. They are the skin to the pillars’ bones, but, as we zoom in further, this soft tissue permeates every moment of this meticulously crafted work.
Pillar I unapologetically throws us into the world of Seven Pillars. The building blocks of the piece are flying around like shrapnel, colliding and combining with each other to eventually congeal into a cohesive whole. This extraverted overture is followed by the first solo, Amethyst. Scored for vibraphone, it transports us away from the cacophony of Pillar I into the colorful, dreamlike world of pitch and brightness.
Pillar II is an otherworldly experience generated from Akiho’s reimagining of what the vibraphone and crotales can be. It begins with glowing, amorphous sounds. The resolution on these sounds is made finer and finer as the piece progresses, until they become sharply defined. This sets the stage for Pillar III which brings us back to earth with its firm rhythmic underpinning. Interlocking figures dance around each other and then snap into unison. We are treated to Akiho’s version of a backbeat—in 13 beats rather than in 4. Layers of variations culminate into a fire-alarm of sound that collapses into a sedated coda. The second solo, Spiel, snaps us out of this trans and introduces the glockenspiel. Kicking down the door with dazzling speed and agility, eventually it disappears into thin air as if nothing had happened.
The stage is now set for the nucleus of the whole piece, Pillar IV. Every theme presented thus far is here, tightly woven into an impenetrable lattice structure. Even in its moments of ambiguity, Pillar IV has a straight-faced determination that is unflappable. After this onslaught, the air is cleared with the third solo of Seven Pillars, mARImbA, which introduces the marimba to our palette. Its warm, dark tones are a welcome sound, exploring a more introspective realm than we’ve yet heard.
Pillar V is a sadistic game. We hear the same hexatonic scale that we heard in Pillar III, but now it is used as the foundation for a bass line ostinato. With each repetition, this piece swells like a festering wound. A singular build which lasts the latter two-thirds of the movement presses forward relentlessly, ending with a manic, obsessive, accelerating repetition of its six pitches. The following movement, Pillar VI, is like a delirious fever-dream. A motif like the twitchy ticking of a clock in the high marimba is battled by unsettled unison gestures. The coda of Pillar VI is profound in its simplicity. Unison repeated pulses anchor a high yearning marimba descant. These pulses fade away and so too does the desperate melody. This stillness is jolted forward by the fourth and final solo, carTogRAPh. Scored for a multi-percussion setup (a ‘trap’ set), this solo is a virtuosic display of rhythmic complexity and agility. Titled accordingly, carTogRAPh requires the performer to navigate a highly detailed map of musical twists and turns in this exhilarating demonstration of dexterity.
The final movement, Pillar VII, is structurally a near carbon copy of Pillar I, but rather than stark unpitched sounds, Pillar VII is populated with all the vivid colors that have been discovered throughout the piece. By now, we’ve come to expect the gradual build that has propelled so many of the previous movements, but rather than breaking itself under the duress and intensity, Pillar VII transcends itself. Notes that were dizzyingly fast now seem comforting, and with each successive layer we gain confidence, not concern. This movement, and the entire Seven Pillars, finishes with the performers executing over five thousand notes in the final three minutes alone. It’s like taking off in a rocket, and we all are passengers.
-Jonny Allen
The commission of Seven Pillars has been made possible by the Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Program, with generous funding provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Chamber Music America Endowment Fund, and also by the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition at Brigham Young University.
Learn More
To accompany the Seven Pillars album, Sandbox Percussion commissioned 11 teams of filmmakers to create 11 different films - one for each of the 11 movements. View them all here.
Accessibility notes
WARNING: This performance features strobe lights, and could potentially trigger seizures for people with photosensitive epilepsy.
For more information about accessibility at the Walker, visit our Access page.
About the Artists
ANDY AKIHO is a “trailblazing” (Los Angeles Times) Pulitzer Prize and GRAMMY-nominated composer whose bold works unravel intricate and unexpected patterns while surpassing preconceived boundaries of classical music. Known as “an increasingly in-demand composer” (The New York Times), Akiho has earned international acclaim for his large-scale works that emphasize the natural theatricality of live performance. He is the only composer to be nominated for a GRAMMY in the Best Contemporary Classical Composition category in 2022 and 2023.
Highlights of the 2022-2023 season include the world-premiere of a new interdisciplinary work for Omaha Symphony honoring visual artist Jun Kaneko, the world-premiere of a new commission for Imani Winds, and a sold-out run of Akiho’s “Seven Pillars” at Théâtre du Châtelet, choreographed by Benjamin Millepied and performed by Sandbox Percussion and LA Dance Project. Equally at home writing chamber music and symphonies, Akiho is the Oregon Symphony Orchestra’s 2022-2023 composer-in-residence.
Recent engagements include commissioned premieres by the New York Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra, Shanghai Symphony, China Philharmonic, Guangzhou Symphony, Oregon Symphony Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, Music@Menlo, LA Dance Project and The Industry.
Akiho has been recognized with many prestigious awards and organizations including the Rome Prize, Lili Boulanger Memorial Prize, Harvard University Fromm Commission, Barlow Endowment, New Music USA, and Chamber Music America. His compositions have been featured by organizations such as Bang on a Can, American Composers Forum, The Intimacy of Creativity in Hong Kong, and the Heidelberg Festival. Akiho was born in 1979 in Columbia, SC, and is currently based in Portland, OR and New York City. He is represented by CAMI Music.
MICHAEL JOSEPH MCQUILKEN originally hails from Portland, Oregon, where he was raised in a working-class home by a health worker mother who was terrified that his artistic tendencies would leave him perpetually broke. These fears were not allayed when 20-something Michael became a professional street performer for three years, making music with garbage. Fortunately, he finagled a scholarship-fueled higher education, and now he is a (working) director, writer, filmmaker, and composer in New Haven. He holds degrees in directing and sound engineering, and has an amazing wife, Adina, and a beautiful 2-yr-old daughter, Zelda, who both tolerate his restless creative tendencies that have taken over the majority of the space in their home. Recent collaborators include Drake, Migos, Cardi B, The Flaming Lips, Du Yun, Daniil Trifonov, Winston Duke, Lupita Nyong'o, and many others. Michael also serves as the current Artistic Director for Titus Kaphar's film production company, REVOLUTION READY.
Described as “exhilarating” (The New York Times) and “utterly mesmerizing” (The Guardian), GRAMMY®-nominated ensemble SANDBOX PERCUSSION is dedicated to artistry in contemporary chamber music. The ensemble was brought together in 2011 by a love of chamber music and the simple joy of playing together; today, Sandbox Percussion captivates worldwide audiences with visually and aurally stunning performances.
Sandbox Percussion’s 2021 album Seven Pillars was nominated for two GRAMMY® awards — Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance and Best Contemporary Classical Composition. The ensemble performed the piece more than 15 times throughout the United States and Europe last season, including at the Théâtre du Châtelet, in Paris.
In the 2023-24 season, Sandbox Percussion performs Seven Pillars at the VIVO Music Festival (Columbus, OH); the New School (New York); Aperio, Music of the Americas (Houston); the Frost School of Music (Miami); Brown University (Providence, RI); and the Peace Center (Greenville, SC), among other venues.
This season, Sandbox Percussion also releases their fourth album, Wilderness, featuring the piece of the same name by experimental composer Jerome Begin. Other season highlights include two performances at the Park Avenue Armory (New York), featuring premieres by Chris Cerrone and Viet Cuong; a performance at the 92nd Street Y with pianist and new-music champion Conor Hanick featuring the New York premiere of two works composed for them by Christopher Cerrone and by Tyshawn Sorey; and an appearance at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Sandbox Percussion will also continue to champion Viet Cuong’s acclaimed concerto for percussion quartet, Re(new)al, including performances with the Des Moines Symphony and with the Albany Symphony, which commissioned the piece.
Besides maintaining an international performance schedule, Sandbox Percussion holds the position of ensemble-in-residence and percussion faculty at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and The New School’s College of Performing Arts. In 2016, Sandbox Percussion founded the Sandbox Percussion Seminar, introducing percussion students to the leading percussion chamber music of the day.
Sandbox Percussion endorses Pearl/Adams musical instruments, Zildjian cymbals, Vic Firth sticks and mallets, Remo drumheads, and Black Swamp accessories.
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