Photograph by Carl Socolow
The 20-member chamber ensemble Alarm Will Sound took its name from a sign hanging over an emergency exit door. And its sound, likewise, is urgent, immediate, dramatic, with a repertoire ranging from contemporary classical (György Ligeti’s concertos, John Adams’ Gnarly Buttons) to orchestral arrangements of Aphex Twin, Jelly Roll Morton, Frank Zappa, and The Shaggs’ accidentally atonal outsider classic “Philosophy of the World.” The band isn’t just experimental and energetic—you don’t get called “the future of classical music” by The Denver Post unless you have, as they say, chops. Despite being New York–based, avant-garde, totally hotshot (it can be, and play, anywhere), the group announced last summer that it had dedicated its 2012–13 season to St. Louis.
The final show of that season, 1969, is not just a concert, but also a two-act piece of theater incorporating live music and speculative history. Playwright Andrew Kupfer penned a script around an event that never happened: John Lennon and avant-garde German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen plan to meet up in New York City, but the meeting never takes place, because a blizzard delays Lennon. Musicians step in as actors to play musicians, and the repertoire includes Stockhausen’s Hymnen, The Beatles’ “Revolution 9,” and works by Leonard Bernstein and Italian composer Luciano Berio, which get translated into sounds as well as images on screens. Though Yoko Ono says the meeting never happened, the story at the center of 1969—the unprecedented mixing of politics, avant-garde art, popular music, and utopian ideals—is sheer truth, and one that still resonates.
Click here for our Look-Listen post on the second installment of the ensemble's "St. Louis Season," which included a performance of Minimalist composer Steve Reich's new piece, "Radio Rewrite." The post features comments by Alarm Will Sound's conductor and artistic director Alan Pierson, managing director Gavin Chuck, and Reich.
Alarm Will Sound: 1969. April 26, 8 p.m. $25. Touhill Performing Arts Center, University of Missouri–St. Louis, 1 University, 314-516-4949, touhill.org.
