Sandbox Percussion: Tiny Desk Concert

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Sandbox Percussion: Tiny Desk Concert with tags npr, npr music, national public radio, live, performance, tiny desk, tiny desk concert, tony desk, tiny concert

Tom Huizenga | March 28, 2025

We had to get an early start to figure out how to ergonomically squeeze all of Sandbox Percussion’s instruments behind the Tiny Desk.

The band deploys a surprisingly wide arsenal. The professionally-built instruments, like the bass drum and vibraphone, took up most of the Tiny Desk real estate. The smaller, unexpected instruments needed to be placed just right for easy access. There were metal plumbing pipes and wooden slats you can find at the hardware store, ordinary wine glasses from your kitchen, an old cigar box and an empty bourbon bottle.

The members of Sandbox Percussion have a longstanding relationship with composer Andy Akiho. They begin this set with a segment of Seven Pillars, an 80-minute piece Akiho wrote for the group, which was a 2022 Pulitzer Prize finalist. It’s a supercharged, edge-of-the-seat performance where the sounds delight, the polyrhythms intertwine and mallets fly in a blur.

Then come the wine glasses. Remember, as a kid, how you annoyed your family by running your finger around the rim of a water glass at the dinner table? The Sandbox guys take this to an exquisite level in music by Viet Cuong. The glasses, tuned with varying levels of water, toll woozily, as if bells could get drunk. Later, they “sing” with otherworldly overtones, sounding better than any synthesizer.

As a bonus, Sandbox invites Akiho himself to join on steel drum for the mesmerizing final piece –- Akiho’s own Karakurenai, where interlocking beats groove like gamelan music, and delicious sounds emanate from bowed rice bowls, pipes and slabs of wood.

In the end, it was worth unloading all those amazing instruments to document one of today’s finest — 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: steel drum

TINY DESK TEAM