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News & Events
Mizzou New Music Summer Festival Announces Eight Resident Composers
From a London-based composer pursuing a doctorate at the Royal Academy of Music, to a Greek studying music in upstate New York, to a Kansas City native working towards her Master’s degree at Mizzou, the resident composers selected for this year’s Mizzou New Music Summer Festival are perhaps the most diverse group yet in the event’s three-year history.
The University of Missouri School of Music and the Mizzou New Music Initiative today announced the eight resident composers selected for the 2012 Festival, which will take place Monday, July 23 through Saturday, July 28 in Columbia. Chosen through a portfolio application process that this year attracted 144 entries from all over the world—including Israel, France, Ireland, Spain, South Africa, Russia, England, Thailand, Canada and China—they are: Stephanie Berg (Columbia, MO); Brian Ciach (Bloomington, IN); David Crowell (New York, NY); Stylianos Dimou (Rochester, NY); Ted Goldman (Rochester, NY); Patrick Harlin (Ann Arbor, MI); Charlie Piper (London, England); and Asha Srinivasan (Appleton, WI).
The 2012 Mizzou New Music Summer Festival will include a series of public concerts featuring music from the resident composers and other contemporary creators, as well as workshops, master classes and other events. The Festival’s guest composers for 2012 will be Steven Stucky, winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for composition and professor at Cornell University; and Donnacha Dennehy, a native of Dublin who is one of the leading contemporary composers in Ireland. Alarm Will Sound once again will serve as resident ensemble.
A complete schedule of events, times, dates and venues for the 2012 Mizzou New Music Summer Festival will be announced at a later date. For more information, please visit the Mizzou New Music website.
1969 Makes Time Out New York's Top 10
Alarm Will Sound's performance of 1969 at Zankel Hall in March 2011 is a top-ten pick by Time Out New York. Created and developed by Andrew Kupfer, Nigel Maister, and Alan Pierson, 1969 tells the story of great musicians—John Lennon, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Paul McCartney, Luciano Berio, Yoko Ono, and Leonard Bernstein—striving for a new music and a new world amidst the turmoil of the late 1960s.
Watch a video of Matt Marks’s arrangement of the iconic Revolution 9 here, performed as part of 1969.
Features
Ken Ueno discusses the creation of (X)igágáí
10 Years of Alarm Will Sound
May 24, 2001 was the first time Alarm Will Sound performed. We played the music of Steve Reich at the Miller Theatre in New York City. Since then, we've gone on to perform all over the USA and Europe, releasing recordings along the way and reaching audiences who are turned on by the wide variety of what is happening in today's music.
To celebrate our tenth birthday, we're streaming an audio track to all our fans. It's a cover of Philosophy of the World by The Shaggs, the girl band who never heard music before they began inventing their own from the ground up. The results are wonderfully strange—unlike anything else at the time or since—and strangely joyous. (Here is the original track and here is a fascinating interview with two of the sisters who were The Shaggs.) Our cover version weaves together musical strands we've pursued over our first ten years: the complexity of different rhythms competing for attention that is at the core of a/rhythmia; the arrangement of music outside the classical tradition as we did for Acoustica; and the exploration of music by American mavericks like Nancarrow, Zappa, and Cage.
Stream the cover, arranged by Gavin Chuck, from the Soundcloud player below.
Who We Are
Alarm Will Sound is a twenty-member group dedicated to the creation, performance, and recording of today's most innovative music.
Member Spotlight
John Pickford Richards
In the early days, before Alarm Will Sound was created, John remembers his first encounter with the future members of the band at an Eastman concert of Steve Reich’s music. John jumped in to play Music for 18 Musicians and Tehillim to a standing-room-only audience in Eastman’s Kilbourn Hall. Since the founding of Alarm Will Sound, John has played several administrative roles in the group serving at various times as its librarian, development director and ombudsman.
After graduating from Eastman, John was confronted with the question that faces many musicians: What do I do after graduating with a degree in music? Fortunately, he and three other members of Alarm Will Sound were presented with the opportunity to serve as artists-in-residence at Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA. They stayed in what would become known as ‘The Farmhouse’ for 3 years while teaching and performing. The rest of the ensemble would join them occasionally for a lot of shenanigans and some professional work (e.g., the recording of Acoustica).
Like most musicians just moving to New York City, John’s career was tough starting out as a small fish in a big pond, but his connections from Eastman have led to a successful international career. John is the founding violist and Executive Director of JACK Quartet.
Featured Recording
The Shaggs’ Philosophy of the World
Gavin Chuck, our Managing Director, arranged Philosophy of the World by The Shaggs, the girl band who never heard music before they began inventing their own from the ground up. The results are wonderfully strange—unlike anything else at the time or since—and strangely joyous.
Be alarmist
Read articles by our members, get behind-the-scenes reports about our projects, and share your thoughts at Alarmists, our blog.