Rackham Auditorium
Andy Akiho &
Sandbox Percussion
Early access for renewing subscribers
starts Tue Apr 28
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.”
PROGRAM (Sun 11/15/2026: Rackham Auditorium)
Program will be drawn from the following works by Andy Akiho:
Portal
Pillar III
Pillar V
Karakurenai
Aka
Go
Locken
Pentalateral I
Buy Tickets
Andy Akiho &
Sandbox Percussion
Rackham Auditorium
Season tickets on sale Tue May 5
Early access for renewing subscribers
starts Tue Apr 28
CHOOSE A PERFORMANCE:
Or call the ticket office at 734-764-2538
* Student, Senior and Group Discounts may be available
Andy Akiho is a “trailblazing” (Los Angeles Times) Pulitzer Prize finalist and seven-time GRAMMY®-nominated composer whose bold works unravel intricate and unexpected patterns while surpassing preconceived boundaries of classical music. Called “increasingly in-demand” by 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, 2023, and 2024.
Akiho has been recognized via many prestigious awards and organizations including the Rome Prize, American Academy of Arts and Letters, 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.
An active steel pannist, Akiho has performed his works with Imani Winds, the LA Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella Series, the Berlin Philharmonic’s Scharoun Ensemble, the International Drum Festival in Taiwan, and more. Akiho’s recordings No One To Know One, The War Below, Seven Pillars, Oculus, Sculptures, and BeLonging feature brilliantly crafted compositions inspired by his primary instrument, the steel pan.
Described as “exhilarating” by The New York Times and “utterly mesmerizing” by The Guardian, the GRAMMY®-nominated Sandbox Percussion champions living composers through its unwavering dedication to contemporary chamber music. In 2011, Jonathan Allen, Victor Caccese, Ian Rosenbaum, and Terry Sweeney were brought together by their love of contemporary music and interest in expanding the percussion repertoire; they have since captivated audiences around the world through visually and aurally stunning performances. Today, the foursome are established leaders in contemporary music for percussion, engaging a wider audience for classical music through multidisciplinary collaborations with leading composers and artists.
In 2025, the group made its long-awaited debut on NPR’s immensely popular Tiny Desk series, with a genre-defying program that consists of music by Andy Akiho and Viet Cuong, two of the most important voices in contemporary classical music. Sandbox Percussion also recorded percussion music for its first feature film, The Wild Robot (DreamWorks, 2024), an animated science fiction film directed by Chris Sanders, with music by Kris Bowers. It received three Academy Award nominations.
Sandbox Percussion is the first percussion ensemble to receive the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant. At the 2024 ceremony, the group performed “Pillar V,” from Seven Pillars, a 2021 feature-length suite for percussion quartet composed by Akiho and commissioned by Sandbox Percussion, with stage direction and lighting design by Michael Joseph McQuilken. The New York Times praised Seven Pillars as “a lush, brooding celebration of noise” and “as pure as music gets.” It was nominated for two GRAMMY® awards—Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance and Best Contemporary Classical Composition—and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Since the world premiere, Sandbox Percussion has taken Seven Pillars on tour around the globe, from Paris to Beijing.
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