Dear friends, 

We’re still glowing from the amazing week we had working with so many bright young percussionists at our 9th annual percussion seminar. Now we’re revving things back up for another busy month of performances!

In a few days, we’re heading to Portland, Oregon to join Chamber Music Northwest (CMNW) to perform not one, but two world premieres (!!!) by two legendary composers: John Luther Adams and Joan Tower. On July 10th, we’re kicking off our time in Portland with John Luther Adams’s new work for percussion quartet, Prophecies of Fire. This new work is a 30 minute journey from earth-shaking drums to searing glockenspiels that truly lives up to its name. A few days later, we’re bringing Joan Tower’s new work for the unique combination of percussion quartet and violin, To Sing Or Dance, to the Chamber Music Northwest stage alongside the incredible violinist Soovin Kim. These performances will be on July 14th and July 15th. While in Portland, we will also perform a free outdoor community concert as part of SoundsTruck NW, a traveling concert venue. We’ll be playing a variety of Sandbox pieces for the on July 12th at the Chehalem Cultural Center in Newberg, OR.

In between these shows in Portland, we’ll run down to Eugene to perform at the Oregon Bach Festival. That concert is on July 13th and will feature another performance of John Luther Adams’s Prophecies of Fire, and a third world premiere of excerpts from Bloom by Michael Torke. This concert will also include other Sandbox classics like Next Week’s Trees by Viet Cuong, vv by Juri Seo, and Ode To Joy by Chris Cerrone.

If you’re on the west coast, we’d love to see you at any and all of these events – it’s going to be an exciting week!

Towards the end of July, we’ll be back in New York working on a project that’s unlike anything we’ve done before. On July 21st, we’re heading to Katonah, New York – one of our favorite areas upstate – for the world premiere of Doug Cuomo’s The Jump Up! at the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts. As part of this performance, we’re inviting percussionists of all kinds to join us outdoors as we play and move through Caramoor’s Sunken Garden. We’ve been working closely with Doug and director Mark DeChiazza for the past few months, and we can’t wait to see this piece come to life!

This performance is FREE – if you’d like to attend or play with us, you can find more information here.

As always, thanks for reading. 

With gratitude, 
Ian, Jonny, Terry, and Victor