PRINTAlarm Will Sound will set the stage during the Mizzou New Music Summer Festival
The 20-member ensemble gives classical music a modern twist
Photo courtesy of Alarm Will Sound
The 20 members of Alarm Will Sound perform classical renditions of popular and modern music. The group’s unified sound enables it to interpret contemporary musicians, such as electronic artist Aphex Twin, with a vibrant crescendo that Renaissance artists would appreciate.
July 15, 2010 | 12:00 a.m. CST
They are a team of musicians driven by a rhythm coach and led by notes that have spanned generations. They are the members of Alarm Will Sound, a fine arts ensemble that stretches the musical boundaries of society by forging genres from many eras. In the group, modern electronic music meets an acoustic orchestra ready to take on classical works.
Nine years ago, 20 students from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., made a faux pas in the world of Western music by not confining themselves to performances of music by classical composers. They expanded their student-led classical ensemble, Ossiaa, by forming Alarm Will Sound. The group is known especially for its renditions of music by electronic musician Aphex Twin, who synthesizes mixed tracks of techno-digital sounds. Alarm Will Sound uses traditional orchestral instruments to recreate his music.
Alarm Will Sound
Where: The Missouri Theatre Center for the Arts
When: July 18, 2 p.m.
Cost: $15 for adults, $10 for students
Call: 573-875-0600
In addition to imitating electronic music, Alarm Will Sound plays classical music that sounds similar to composers of the past but retains a colorful accent. “The Renaissance period had experimental things that didn’t come up again for 500 years,” says Stefan Freund, cellist and composer for the ensemble. “A lot of the experimentation in Renaissance music is connected to now. There’s a lot of freedom in playing that music in that we don’t know how exactly it was played. It’s like rediscovering something because it’s been buried for a long time.”
Fearless in its approach to trying new things, the ensemble plays music written by new, undiscovered composers. For the Mizzou New Music Summer Festival, a classical music event sponsored by MU, new composers were chosen to write for the ensemble. This demonstrates the group’s risk taking and allows the composers to premiere their pieces. Jeremy Podgursky is a composer and performer of electroacoustic music who is one of eight of 120 applicants chosen to compose and write for the group that he has respected for years.
“There’s a sense of adventure to what these performers are doing,” Podgursky says. “They seem to have no fear when you look at the kinds of music they’re tackling. They don’t seem to limit themselves to one style of music. I’m looking forward to working with that fearlessness.”
The group’s spontaneity is attributed to the tight bond between its members. Together, they are able to cross new sound barriers. “I like the camaraderie we have, especially with the string section,” Freund says. “We have a real strong connection to each other. It’s very easy to play with people you have that kind of rapport with. We share the same kind of physicality in our playing in that we can create a really unified sound in rhythm and dynamics.”
Alarm Will Sound thrives off the unity that makes its sound so powerful. “They have two or three or even four players that play so intricately together that they create the sound of a composite electronic drum set,” says Paul Dooley, another selected composer. “It sounds like one player.”
Alarm Will Sound brings a joie de vivre back into a genre of music that was once reserved for the pages of classical history. “Alarm Will Sound, although they’re using (acoustic) instruments that are traditionally used for classical music, are creating vibrant animated music,” Podgursky says. “They’re fully alive.”
