7 September 2022
The particular University of South Carolina’s Southern Exposure New Music Collection is entering its 3rd decade with yet another homegrown bang. On Sept. nine, the experimental/contemporary music display will open its period with a performance of “Seven Pillars” — the evocative, innovative (and Pulitzer Prize-nominated) new work from percussionist and composer Andy Akiho, a Columbia native that did his undergraduate coaching here at the university’s College of Music. The item — an 80-minute, 11-movement tour-de-force that the New York Moments called “a lush, glumness celebration of noise” — is the product of an extreme, years-long collaboration with Sandbox Percussion, a quartet associated with like-minded players in graduate student school at Yale College of Music with an appreciation for innovative chamber popular music. Akiho, too, was at the exact Yale School of Song around the same time and made up one of the group’s first commission, in what would become “Pillar Four” of the Seven Key elements suite. “I remember (Akiho) used to do a weekly show at a sushi place in area, ” said Ian Brian Rosenbaum, one of the quartet’s part. “He would drag many people from the school that can be played with him. When I saw him or her play steel pan (drums), I was completely blown away by way of him. I mean, he’s a kind of once-in-a-generation people who really redefines what you think is possible upon an instrument. I knew I needed to promote this guy. “
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Akiho loans his participation in the Palmetto Pans Steel Drum Music group as some of his starting inspirations. He began composing steel metal drums pieces before extending his interests to include slot provided percussion and classical popular music work as well. That basic piece for Seven Support beams was first performed back in 2014, but , even then, Akiho had a vision for a more substantial, grander work built within the formal concept of a palindrome, where movements would vanity mirror each with a formal, specific complexity. The seven “pillars” would be ensemble compositions, along with four solo pieces resulting in the necessary number of mirrors as well as matching each player inside quartet’s particular skill set. “He was telling me possibly back then about all these methods, ” said Rosenbaum. “He wrote the glockenspiel solamente for seven pillars also, and he even wrote all the structure of seven key elements at the top of the score — he knew what purchase the movements go, as soon as the solos happen, all of that type of stuff. “Sandbox was hardly starting out at the time and Akiho often struggled to finish sections. But the piece would slowly and gradually come together over multiple residencies and periods of extreme collaboration between the composer as well as four members, particularly if the COVID-19 lockdowns began on 2020 and everyone was free of deadline demands. “This was obviously a wildly different process to a piece than we had actually experienced, ” Rosenbaum hoary. “Andy (Akiho) was quite set on this process… we would include sessions where we would improvise with him, and he would most likely sort of compose on people in real time. “
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The lockdown not only gave them more hours to complete the piece, furthermore, it changed how they approached it is presentation to the world. Rather than rushing to meet a hottest deadline and then touring often the piece first, the dress and bag ended up recording it inside studio, commissioning 11 unique video accompaniments for each mobility (each wildly inventive together with formally different from one another). They also collaborated with filmmaker Michael McQuilken on holding and lighting design for survive performances, with lights flawlessly integrated into the music and set off by the band members herself as part of the performance. And while its far too soon to make artistic historical pronouncements, the essential praise around Seven Support beams, which includes two Grammy Accolades nominations, the Pulitzer candidate selection and glowing reviews via around the world, suggest that it might nicely be remembered as a enormous work thanks to its proper complexity, innovative use of arrangement and entrancing beauty. “It’s just a hugely ambitious undertaking, so stunning and gorgeous, ” said Michael Harley davidson, the artistic director of a Southern Exposure series, in any prior interview with 100 % free Times. “It’s too early to help predict these sorts of things, although I would imagine that this is will be one of the pieces that people recall for many, many years to come and can be one of the landmark functions of this century. “
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