A Pre-School Metaphor for a Pre-School Show

The members of Sandbox Percussion: Ian Rosenbaum, Victor Caccese, Terry Sweeney, and Jonny Allen (from their Web site home page)

Last night the San Francisco Performances Pivot Festival concluded with a performance of Andy Akiho’s full-evening composition Seven Pillars. The players were the four members of the Sandbox Percussion quartet of Ian Rosenbaum, Jonny Allen, Terry Sweeney, and Victor Caccese. Allen provided a rich introduction to this music through his program notes, complete with a diagram of the composition’s episodes and another presumably showing the physical disposition of those pillars.

This was clearly a major cognitive undertaking. Sadly, the music itself was anything but cognitive. Granted, the percussionists had a keen sense of rhythm, particularly the polyrhythms that emerged when the full ensemble was performing. That diagram also suggested the significance of symmetry through the way in which the solo episodes were interleaved between the pillars. Unfortunately, none of that significance had much to do with what the performers were actually playing, making the entire evening feel like little more than (as Winston Churchill put it) “one damned thing after another!”

Personally, I think the quartet was taking their name too seriously. They were too busy playing with their metaphorical pails and shovels to care very much whether others might be listening to (or even watching) them. There was clearly a lot of talent up there on the Herbst Theatre stage. However, when it came to presenting that talent to the audience, there was just too much self-indulgence on the part of the performers. Perhaps they are more committed to their efforts when playing for friends in a SoHo loft!