Frank’s Sandbox Premiere
January 30-February 1, 2026
Experience the culmination of a multi-year collaboration with Sandbox Composer-in-Residence Gabriela Lena Frank, the SPCO and The Great Northern. As a composer, Frank’s body of …
Sandbox Residency
A mold-breaking model for new music
The SPCO Sandbox is a new kind of composer residency program which aims to build a community of curiosity, exploration and collaboration around new music by inviting composers to develop new works in a collaborative process with the orchestra over the course of a season. The idea of placing a composer at the creative center of an orchestra is not new. Indeed, it is this very arrangement that proved such fertile creative ground for composer Franz Joseph Haydn, who famously said of his time embedded with the Esterházy court orchestra that:
As head of an orchestra, I could try things out, observe what creates a good effect and what weakens it, and thus revise, make additions or cuts, take risks. I was cut off from the world, nobody in my vicinity could upset my self-confidence … I had no choice but to become original.
Gabriela Lena Frank is our 2025.26 Sandbox Composer-in-Residence and will premiere her new composition in January 2026. Her body of work centers climate change, community, and the role of the artist in stewarding change. Past Sandbox composers include Viet Cuong (2022.23 season), Clarice Assad (2023.24 season) and Valerie Coleman (2024.25 season).
Upcoming events
SPCO Sandbox Composer Residencies are made possible with generous project support from:
Amphion Foundation
The Aaron Copland Fund for Music
Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University
David and Karen Olson Family Foundation
Justus and Elizabeth Schlichting
Nara Fund
New Music USA