New member of Sandbox and TedxGowanus!

Greetings from Brooklyn (winter wonderland), NY!!

Since we’re snowed in today, we thought it would be a good opportunity to inform you of some exciting news. We are thrilled to welcome the newest member of Sandbox, Terry Sweeney! Terry is currently pursuing his masters degree at the Yale School of Music. He is a member of the Lunar Ensemble based in Baltimore, MD and has appeared with the Sonar New Music Ensemble. Terry was the percussionist for two summers at the Aspen Music Festival and was on faculty at the Peabody Preparatory program. He is currently an educator for the Music in Schools program in New Haven, CT.

Terry is taking the place of Garrett Arney, who is leaving Sandbox to pursue other performance endeavors. He is now the co-founder of arx duo with percussionist, Mari Yoshinaga. You can see their amazing videos of Alejandro Viñao’s Book of Grooves, and arrangement of Maurice Ravel’s Alborada del Gracioso for two marimbas at their Vic Firth artist page. 

With this new addition to our family we have added a members section to our website. There you can read a little more about us as individuals and even contact us directly at our personal Sandbox Percussion email addresses.

In other news, this weekend we will be performing on a Tedx talk in Brooklyn as part of a collaboration with Blind Ear Music! Blind Ear is a group a composers fusing technology and performance in a very unique way. During the performance pre-composed loops will be transmitted to our laptop screens using a wi-fi connection and advanced notation software. We will perform these loops on various mallet instruments. The software allows the composer to communicate with us during the performance controlling what we are playing, and even how loud and fast we are playing it. The piece is therefore composed in real-time. In our session the composers will introduce this technology and discuss how it is used in the live performance. Using this new software we will then perform their piece. The event is sold out, but you can stream it for free here. Please join us! We are performing last in the 6-8pm block of talks.

The talk will also be recorded, so keep an eye out on our website and facebook page for the video!

Until next time! And to our fellow New Englanders, stay warm!

Ian, Jonny, Terry, Victor