Alarm Will Sound

Happy March everyone! And happy end of spring break! My spring break was wonderfully productive and was in no way filled with dormancy.

As we all make the sad, sad transition back into school, I want to talk a bit about my favorite topic, the world of classical music. But! Before you stop reading and write me off as an old fashioned boring old guy in a suit that goes to opera and comments on the divinity and “high class” of the music that I’m listening to! I want to talk about where classical music intersects with popular music, where classical music is TODAY and why YOU should care. Because you should. It’s cool stuff.

So I want to start with how I got into this world of contemporary music by highlighting one of my favorite groups, a new music ensemble called Alarm Will Sound.

Alarm Will Sound could be called something like a “chamber orchestra,” if you wanted to give it a name. It has string, woodwind, brass, and percussion instruments, and they are all arranged around one conductor. It’s a “chamber” group because it has so few numbers: only one or two musicians per part (compared to a full symphony orchestra, which has quite a few musicians playing the same part…). All the musicians in Alarm Will Sound are classically trained—all have graduated with at least one degree in music. In fact, they started as a group of students at the Eastman School of Music. But what makes Alarm Will Sound different, in my mind, in their willingness to explore and be open to all kinds of music. As it says in the intro video above, AWS’s members have experience in all kinds of music, from world music to jazz. And this shows in their output: in 2005 they released an album of Aphex Twin covers, called Acoustica. Go back and read that again. Cover album. Aphex Twin. Y’know! The electronic artist, who made tracks like this…

and Alarm Will Sound’s cover?

This is a “classical” ensemble that sees electronic music as just as valid as anything that has Beethoven’s name on it. It’s such a wonderfully forward thinking strategy! And the things they produce are just really cool.

They also came out with another album in 2009, called A/Rhythmia, a project highlighting rhythmically challenging works. And this is where I first discovered AWS and fell in love with their music. In particular, I really dug this piece, called Yo Shakespeare by Michael Gordon….

But before I start to melt into uncompromising praise for a group of musicians I’ve never seen live, I’ll just take note of what an ensemble like AWS says as to the current state of music. To me, it says that there are no longer any boundaries. Genre is a meaningless term. All music is good music, and all music deserves a listen. So check out this “classical” music and see why I love it so much.

And I’ll leave you with one last video, Alarm Will Sound’s performance of Paul Dooley’s Point Blank. Paul is a doctoral student at the School of Music ,Theatre and Dance. Go Blue.