Music Musings

Alarm Will Sound rules!

Alarm Will Sound is enjoying our third year as the resident ensemble for the Mizzou New Music Festival. Stefan Freund and the University of Missouri hosts the festival, as well as Jeanne and Rex Sinquefield. We are deeply grateful for Rex and Jeanne’s support. They are visionaries in many areas and are quickly turning Missouri into a center of creative activity for contemporary classical music.

We’re here for two weeks. We’ve just finished the first week at Rex and Jeanne’s gorgeous 1,000-acre retreat where we’ve been rehearsing. My days have been fantastic: I wake up and compose for a few hours, then do my workout of the day, then rehearse for about six to eight hours with AWS, then hang with my buddies, then go practice and read for a while, then bed. Perfect.

I’m involved with three concerts next week: Super Marimba as part of an AWS chamber concert, a concert of eight new pieces by our guest composers, and the AWS concert, which includes world premieres of my new piece METADRUM and a piece by fellow-AWS member Matt Marks. Matt’s piece is a messed-up doo-wop tune. It is funny, elegant, and heartfelt. My remarkable colleagues in AWS not only play their instruments on the piece, but many of them sing as well. They sound incredible. Matt has a solo voice part and he’s totally convincing.

My piece is about 20 minutes long and it’s very intense. I’ve tried to create a powerful ritual experience for the audience. The title METADRUM refers to the drumming that permeates most of the piece. At times it is like a double percussion concerto with me and the phenomenal Chris Thompson as soloists. At other times the entire ensemble turns into a giant drumming machine. It’s a tough piece. It demands a high level of stamina and energy from the players. There are very few groups who have the chops to handle it. I’m fortunate to be working with such amazing players.

Alarm Will Sound is without a doubt one of the best musical ensembles in the world. Not a day goes by that I don’t thank my lucky star that I get to share the stage with these musicians. Not only do we play great music at a high level, but we discuss our repertoire and our projects democratically. Although we have an Artistic Director (Alan Pierson) and a Managing Director (Gavin Chuck), most of the artistic decisions are made by the group as a whole. It can be a laborious way to operate, but the result is consistently brilliant performances that display a level of courage and daring that is entirely unique. There are many ensembles that play music at a high level, but I can’t think of another one in this genre that puts together such original and compelling programs.

Alarm Will Sound rules.

Spring 2011

I’ve been on sabbatical this spring. I’ve used the time wisely. First I made two new recordings of solo marimba music, The Solo Marimba Commissions, Volume 1, and Super Marimba 3. Equilibrium records is releasing the first one. It’s primarily an online release, and will be available on itunes, etc, soon. The second one will find a home later this year.

I also finished a big piece for the NYU Steelband called Kids. Then I wrote a 20-minute work for Alarm Will Sound called METADRUM. AWS will premier METADRUM this summer at the Mizzou festival. It’s basically a double percussion concerto for me and Chris Thompson and at times the entire band turns into a giant drum.

Finally, I’ve been hard at work on my book about triathlon. Working title is Age Grouper: Swimming, Biking, and Running to a Life of Quiet Triumph. It’s about the various challenges and experiences we age groupers go through. I’ve conducted scores of interviews with various age groupers, as well as some of the legends of triathlon, including Dave Scott, Mark Allen, and Joe Friel. I’m pretty excited about this project. Hopefully it will be published next year some time.

Bloomingdale School Gig

Last year I got one of those nice emails that we composers enjoy where Katy Luo from the Bloomingdale School in NYC asked me to write a piece for their A4TY series. Not only was I excited about writing for these talented kids, but I got to follow in a nice lineage of composers who have written for this series that includes Frederic Rzewski, Caleb Burhans, Elliott Sharp, and Dennis Desantis. And I should add that Katy has worked very hard to make this come together and she really does some incredible work as a champion of new music.

I ended up writing an orchestra piece, and a curious one at that. Like the piece I wrote for Classical Jam, this one also includes possible audience participation. After the Classical Jam gig a few weeks ago I’m now pretty confident that people will want to participate and that the sounds that are produced will be quite captivating.

The piece is called People Coming Together and I wrote it as a response to the Haitian earthquake tragedy that happened earlier this year. I generally don’t like programmatic music, as I generally prefer music that is just music, but I was so moved by so many of the individual stories that I felt compelled to respond in some way. I ended up compiling quite a few stories from folks who suffered through the Haitian earthquake, as well as 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and the Asian Tsunami. The stories are amazing, and range from light humor to the deepest and darkest pathos. Various readers are scattered throughout the hall and read various texts at the same time, creating a babbling texture. The audience can participate in that as well (they’ll have the texts in their programs). The music that frames these text readings is at times lyrical and sweet and then quite noisy and aggressive.