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The 2026 Grammy Award-nominated chamber music ensemble Alarm Will Sound will present an evening of groundbreaking contemporary classical music including a world premiere performance in Columbia on Tuesday, January 20, 2026.
University of Missouri School of Music faculty members Stefan Freund and Bill Kalinkos are founding members of New York-based Alarm Will Sound and will perform in the concert, to be held at the Sinquefield Music Center beginning at 7:30 pm.
This concert will take the audience on a unique musical journey from the poetic minimalism of Salvatore Sciarrino, through the inventive communal architecture of John Fitz Rogers, to a brand-new work by Sanaya Ardeshir, whose hybrid background in electronic production and contemporary composition promises something unexpected and contemporary.
Sanaya Ardeshir, known professionally as Sandunes, is a composer-producer whose work spans electronic, experimental and contemporary styles. She was recently selected as a recipient of the Matt Marks Impact Fund. This newly commissioned work, titled Tower of Silence, brings Ardeshir’s distinctive creative voice into the concert hall context and marks an exciting new chapter of collaboration between her and AWS.
Salvatore Sciarrino is among the most influential Italian composers of his generation. Largely self-taught, his music explores the spaces between sound and silence, often drawing the listener into heightened states of awareness. Le voci sottovetro (1998) is a work that elaborates and transcribes earlier vocal and instrumental material (notably from Carlo Gesualdo), reframing it in Sciarrino’s singular sound world. It illuminates refined textures, fragile utterances, and the subtle interplay of voice and instrument in a suspended sonic space.
John Fitz Rogers is a distinguished American composer whose works have been performed widely by ensembles and orchestras. Respiration (2021) was commissioned by Alarm Will Sound and originally conceived during the pandemic-era challenges of ensemble music making. The piece invites listeners into a “breathing” world of interaction – where pulse and meter give
way to listening, gesture, and communal responsiveness – and explores how we listen, respond, pause, and revive.
The concert is free and open to the public and will be presented in Room 130 at the Sinquefield Music Center, 1101 University Ave., in Columbia.
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