6/13/07: Alarm Will Sound presents two concerts at the Musiekgebouw in Amsterdam as part of the Holland Festival.
I’ll be joining Alarm Will Sound on their trip to Amsterdam for the Holland Festival, June 13th. AWS will be presenting two concerts at the Muziekgebouw, a fantastic venue akin to Zankel Hall. The place has an amazing sound and the intimacy of a small theatre style recital hall without the space limitations. Perfect for a 20-piece new music band with a tendency toward theatrical staging and also absurdly complex electronics setups…
Case and point: Benedict Mason’s wonderful and slightly maddening Animals and the Origins of The Dance. A “parade of miniature concertos” (12 in all, with awesome titles such as “Disgraceful Bossa Nova with Lemurs”), the work is scored for 21 musicians, each with their own individual click track. Alarm Will Sound employs its resident percussionist and audio-tech genius Dennis DeSantis to forego the percussion parts for this piece and focus completely on the massive tech setup, which means I happily take over for him on slide whistles, acme sirens, rototoms (shh), marimbula, duck call, lion’s roar, and all the other stuff we hesitate to admit we make a living playing. Originally Mason envisioned having 10 or more conductors on the stage at once, each following blinking LEDs (I can’t decide whether this would be more or less chaotic than dealing with the clicktracks), but however its done the effect is magic – impossible ensemble playing humanly realized.
A similar effect can be witnessed in the ensembles arrangements of Conlon Nancarrow’s piano roll compositions, two of which will be performed by AWS on the June 13th concert. The pieces were originally composed by manually carving out player piano rolls, and have now been arranged, memorized, and staged by the members of Alarm Will Sound. The staging offers a surprisingly satisfying clarification of the different pairings and juxtaposition of voices and rhythmic motives during the pieces.
Apart from the Mason, I will join them on Wolfgang Rihm’s “Will Sound,” commissioned by the group, John Adams’ “Coast” from “Hoodoo Zephyr,” and a number of their electronica arrangements, now so imbedded in their repertoire that they hardly need more than one run-through in rehearsal in order to be ready for a performance.
If you happen to be in Amsterdam… more info here.