Alarm Will Sound to perform works by Thirlwell, Thompson, Wohl, and Jlin on January 17 at Sinquefield Music Center

Alarm Will Sound, the 20-member contemporary music ensemble, is returning to Columbia to perform in concert on Tuesday, January 17, 2023 at the Sinquefield Music Center on the University of Missouri Campus. The 7 p.m. concert is free and open to the public, but seating is limited. Doors open at 6:30.

As the resident ensemble for the annual Mizzou International Composers Festival (MICF), Alarm Will Sound (pictured) has been performing at concerts and festivals in mid-Missouri since 2010. The group’s founding cellist, Stefan Freund, is the Artistic Director of the Mizzou New Music Initiative.

Alarm Will Sound

The concert will feature four pieces, three of them world premieres:

  • “Execution” by composer/performer/producer JG Thirlwell reflects the anxiety of our time in an epic, long-form, 40-minute piece in four movements.
  • “Hanabi” by AWS composer/percussionist Chris Thompson, arranged by AWS bassist Miles Brown, is an all-acoustic version of the electronic track from Thompson’s album “Everything Imaginable Comes True.” Thompson explores and blends the sounds of marching percussion, metronomes, and fireworks samples to create both highly organized and totally chaotic beat-driven music.
  • “Artificial” by Daniel Wohl is a new work in which he explores the question: “How can the limitless palette of electronic sources be convincingly realized by human performers playing traditional instruments that have existed for hundreds of years?”
  • “Back Against the Wall” is by Jerrilynn Patton, known professionally as Jlin, and arranged by Igor Santos. Jlin is one of the most prominent producers of the current generation. In order to emphasize the gritty nature of the original synthesizers, Santos transcribed melodic lines as microtonal clusters and many of the track’s “glitchy” effects are captured by extended instrumental techniques such as string overpressure, scraped percussion, etc.

In addition to the public concert, Alarm Will Sound will be in residence at Mizzou for a week, during which they will rehearse and record in the Sinquefield Music Center’s facilities.