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Two University of Missouri School of Music faculty members are among the nominees for the 2026 Grammy Awards.
Stefan Freund and Bill Kalinkos are founding members of Alarm Will Sound, whose album Land of Winter was nominated for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance. The piece itself was also nominated for Best Contemporary Classical Composition.
Freund is a Professor of Music Composition, the Artistic Director of the Mizzou New Music Initiative, and Director of the Mizzou New Music Ensemble. Kalinkos teaches clarinet and co-directs the Mizzou Creative Improvisation Collective.
Alarm Will Sound is an internationally acclaimed new music ensemble. They also serve as ensemble-in-residence for the annual Mizzou International Composers Festival (MICF) and are in residence at Mizzou each January. Their next concert at Mizzou will be held on January 20, 2026.
Land of Winter was written by Irish composer Donnacha Dennehy whose inspiration for the piece was the quality of light as the seasons change in his native land. He noted in the album’s publicity materials that “The Latin name for Ireland was Hibernia, which translates as ‘land of winter.’”
Dennehy was an MICF guest composer twice – in 2012 and 2019. Alarm Will Sound read and workshopped Land of Winter at the 2022 MICF.
Alarm Will Sound, which is led by artistic director and conductor Alan Pierson, recorded a previous Dennehy work, The Hunger, in 2019. The group performed it in collaboration with Opera Theatre of St. Louis at the University of Missouri – St. Louis’s Touhill Performing Arts Center in 2016.
The Grammy Awards will be presented on February 1 at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles.
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