FACULTY AND GUEST ARTISTS
Sandbox Percussion
Described as “exhilarating” by The New York Times, and “virtuosic and utterly mesmerizing” by The Guardian, Sandbox Percussion has established themselves as a leading proponent of this generation of contemporary percussion chamber music. Brought together by their love of chamber music and the simple joy of playing together, Sandbox Percussion captivates audiences with performances that are both visually and aurally stunning. Through compelling collaborations with composers and performers, Jonathan Allen, Victor Caccese, Ian Rosenbaum, and Terry Sweeney seek to engage a wider audience for classical music.
Sandbox Percussion performs throughout the United States and made their United Kingdom debut in 2019 at the Vale of Glamorgan Festival in Cardiff where they premiered a new work by Benjamin Wallace for percussion quartet and fairground organ. In the 2019-20 season Sandbox Percussion premiered Don’t Look Down, a new work by Christopher Cerrone, with pianist Conor Hanick, as part of a new live stream concert series at the Caramoor Center for Music. They also presented a performance at Dumbarton Oaks of a new work by Viet Cuong. Sandbox Percussion has presented four separate programs of music by John Luther Adams at Storm King Art Center, Tippet Rise Art Center, Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, and the String Theory concert series in Chattanooga, TN. Sandbox performed Viet Cuong’s concerto Re(new)al with the Albany Symphony and the Curtis Symphony Orchestra, as well as premiered a wind ensemble version of the work with the Brooklyn Wind Symphony. Sandbox collaborated with actor and writer Paul Lazar on a portrait concert of music by John Cage at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, and gave three sold out performances of Music for Eighteen Musicians with Emerald City Music in Seattle, WA.
In addition to maintaining a busy concert schedule, Sandbox has also led masterclasses and coachings at schools such as the Peabody Conservatory, Curtis Institute, the University of Southern California, Kansas University, Cornell University, and Furman University. While there, they coached students on some of the most pivotal works in the percussion repertoire including Steve Reich’s Drumming, György Ligeti’s Síppal, Dobbal, Nádihegedüvel, and John Cage’s Third Construction. These teaching experiences have inspired the quartet to pursue a role of pedagogy and mentorship for today’s young generation of musicians. In 2016, Sandbox Percussion founded the NYU Sandbox Percussion Seminar – this week-long seminar invites percussion students from across the globe to rehearse and perform some of today’s leading percussion chamber music repertoire at the iconic Brooklyn venue National Sawdust.
In 2020, Sandbox Percussion released their debut album And That One Too on Coviello Classics. The album features works by longtime collaborators Andy Akiho, David Crowell, Amy Beth Kirsten, and Thomas Kotcheff.
In the 2020-21 season, Sandbox Percussion will launch a group of new virtual initiatives: a concert series live-streamed from their studio in Brooklyn, #sandboxsunday – a live-streamed series of conversations with composers, performers and other close collaborators, and monthly live-readings of new works submitted by composers from around the world. In 2021, Sandbox will release Seven Pillars, an evening-length commissioned work by Andy Akiho, with staging and lighting design by Michael McQuilken.
Sandbox Percussion endorses Pearl/Adams musical instruments, Zildjian cymbals, Vic Firth sticks and mallets, Remo drumheads, and Black Swamp accessories.
John Luther Adams
For John Luther Adams, music is a lifelong search for home—an invitation to slow down, pay attention, and remember our place within the larger community of life on earth.
Living for almost 40 years in northern Alaska, JLA discovered a unique musical world grounded in space, stillness, and elemental forces. In the 1970s and into the ’80s, he worked full time as an environmental activist. But the time came when he felt compelled to dedicate himself entirely to music. He made this choice with the belief that, ultimately, music can do more than politics to change the world. Since that time, he has become one of the most widely admired composers in the world, receiving the Pulitzer Prize, a Grammy Award, and many other honors.
In works such as Become Ocean, In the White Silence, and Canticles of the Holy Wind, Adams brings the sense of wonder that we feel outdoors into the concert hall. And in outdoor works such as Inuksuit and Sila: The Breath of the World, he employs music as a way to reclaim our connections with place, wherever we may be.
A deep concern for the state of the earth and the future of humanity drives Adams to continue composing. As he puts it: “If we can imagine a culture and a society in which we each feel more deeply responsible for our own place in the world, then we just may be able to bring that culture and that society into being.”
Since leaving Alaska, JLA and his wife Cynthia have made their home in the deserts of Mexico, Chile, and the southwestern United States.
Amy Beth Kirsten
Recognized with artist fellowships from the John S. Guggenheim Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, Amy Beth Kirsten’s musical and conceptual language is characterized by an abiding interest in exploring theatrical elements of creation, performance, and presentation. Her body of work fuses music, language, voice, and theatre and often considers musicians’ instruments, bodies, and voices as equal vehicles of expression. Ms. Kirsten has composed evening length, fully-staged composed theatre works as well as traditional concert works for her own ensemble HOWL, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the New World Symphony, Peak Performances, the multi-Grammy-winning eighth blackbird, and American Composers Orchestra, among many others. Ms. Kirsten teaches privately and at the HighSCORE summer festival in Pavia, Italy. She joined the Composition Faculty of the Longy School of Music of Bard College in the Fall of 2017.
David Lang
David Lang is one of the most highly esteemed and performed American composers writing today. His works have been performed around the world in most of the great concert halls.
Lang’s simple song #3, written as part of his score for Paolo Sorrentino’s acclaimed film YOUTH, received many awards nominations in 2016, including the Academy Award and Golden Globe.
His opera prisoner of the state (with libretto by Lang) was co-commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, Rotterdam’s de Doelen Concert Hall, London’s Barbican Centre, Barcelona’s l’Auditori, Bochum Symphony Orchestra, and Bruges’s Concertgebouw, and premiered June 6-8, 2019 in New York, conducted by Jaap van Zweden. prisoner of the state receieves its European premieres during the 2019/2020 season. Other recent works include the writings, commissioned by Carnegie Hall and the Netherlands Kamerkoor, and premiered by Theatre of Voices; the mile-long opera co-created with architect Elizabeth Diller and premiered in New York City’s mile-long elevated park The Highline; symphony without a hero, commissioned and premiered by the Seattle Symphony; the loser, which opened the 2016 Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and for which Lang served as composer, librettist and stage director; the public domain for 1000 singers at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival; his chamber opera anatomy theater at Los Angeles Opera and at the Prototype Festival in New York; the concerto man made for the ensemble So Percussion and a consortium of orchestras, including the BBC Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic; mountain, commissioned by the Cincinnati Symphony, death speaks, a song cycle based on Schubert, but performed by rock musicians, including Bryce Dessner from The National and Shara Worden from My Brightest Diamond; the whisper opera, for the International Contemporary Ensemble and soprano Tony Arnold; and love fail, an evening-length work for the early music vocal ensemble Anonymous 4, with libretto and staging by Lang.
Lang is a Professor of Music Composition at the Yale School of Music and is Artist in Residence at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He is co-founder and co-artistic director of New York’s legendary music collective Bang on a Can. His music is published by Red Poppy Music (ASCAP) and is distributed worldwide by G. Schirmer, Inc.
Kristin Lee
A recipient of the 2015 Avery Fisher Career Grant, as well as a top prizewinner of the 2012 Walter W. Naumburg Competition and the Astral Artists’ 2010 National Auditions, Kristin Lee is a violinist of remarkable versatility and impeccable technique who enjoys a vibrant career as a soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, and educator. “Her technique is flawless, and she has a sense of melodic shaping that reflects an artistic maturity,” writes theSt. LouisPost-Dispatch, and The Strad reports, “She seems entirely comfortable with stylistic diversity, which is one criterion that separates the run-of-the-mill instrumentalists from true artists.”
In addition to her dynamic performing career,Lee was recently appointed to the faculty of University of CincinnatiCollege-Conservatory of Music as Assistant Professor of Violin. She is the artistic director of Emerald CityMusic inSeattle, a chamber music series she co-founded in 2015. Also an accomplished chamber musician, Kristin Lee is a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, performing at Lincoln Center in New York and on tour with CMS throughout each season, as well as a member of Camerata Pacifica in Santa Barbara, sitting as TheBernard Gondos Chair.
Kristin Lee has appeared as soloist with leading orchestras including The Philadelphia Orchestra, St. LouisSymphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Ural Philharmonic ofRussia, Korean Broadcasting Symphony, Guiyang Symphony Orchestra of China, Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional of Dominican Republic, and many others. She has performed on the world’s finest concert stages, including CarnegieHall, Avery Fisher Hall, the Kennedy Center, Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Ravinia Festival, the Louvre Museum in Paris, Washington, D.C.’s Phillips Collection, and Korea’s Kumho ArtGallery.
Born in Seoul, Lee began studying violin at age five and within one year won First Prize at the Korea Times ViolinCompetition. In 1995, she moved to the US to continue her studies under Sonja Foster and in 1997 entered TheJuilliard School’s Pre-College. In2000, Lee was chosen to study with Itzhak Perlman after he heard her perform with the Pre-College Symphony. Lee holds a Master’s degree from The Juilliard School.
Kendall Williams
Having been born around the Trinidadian culture, Kendall Williams has adopted the country’s national instrument, the steel pan. From as early as the age of four, Kendall made efforts to mimic his parents as they displayed their talents in a Miami-based steel band. It wasn’t long before his efforts turned into a reality as he developed his skills and passion for the instrument. As he got older his passion brought out a connection to music and he was able to perform with large, world-renowned steel bands in Trinidad and Tobago as well as bands in the New York based scene for years and counting. He took things a step further changing his major from architecture to music performance on steel pan at Florida Memorial University. He was able to tour the lower United States with the Chorale and even travel to Brazil with the school steel band, all under the direction of Dr. Dawn Batson. Upon graduating with his B.A. in Music Performance, Kendall was encouraged to further his studies at NYU Steinhardt where he completed his Masters of Music in Theory and Composition. There he was able to study with Michael Gordon, Julia Wolfe, and Rich Shemaria while actively participating in the NYU Steel band under the leadership of Artist Faculty member Josh Quillen.
As he moved closer to graduating, his goals included composing and arranging music that could further showcase the steel pan for the virtuous instrument it is, while bringing his unique style to more conventional instruments known today. Now that he has graduated he aggressively pursues a career as a composer, arranger, educator, and advocate for the steel pan instrument. He works to open peoples’ minds to the possibilities steel pan can offer the world by showing that the instrument is far more versatile than it may seem. In 2013, 2015, and 2017, he had music for steel pan and contemporary ensemble programmed on the Bang on A Can Marathon. In 2020 he wrote a solo composition featuring percussion for the Virtual Bang on A Can Marathon while performing as a soloist in the Virtual Bang on A Can marathon the following month. Just before that, he was awarded the opportunity to work with the Brooklyn Philharmonic on a project that involved steel pan ensemble and Orchestra.
In 2014 he was the Van Lier Fellow with the American Composers Orchestra. In addition, he is also currently a doctoral student in music composition at Princeton University! There he studies under the auspices of Dan Trueman, Steve Mackey, Dmitri Tymockzo, and So Percussion. In his most recent years, he has been actively lecturing and leading workshops at various colleges, universities and grade schools across the United States, while he completes his dissertation. Kendall is an active adjunct at Brooklyn College, a teaching assistant in a steel band class at Princeton University, and most recently appointed as an adjunct at New York University where he also teaches private lessons in steel pan. Presently, his goals include establishing steel pan music programs in colleges and universities that will allow musicians to major in steel pan. While pursuing that, he also sits as CEO of Pan in Motion, an organization that he started to promote history, education, culture, and sustainability in steel pan.
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