Revolution under the musical microscope
New music band Alarm Will Sound performed at the Kitchen March 21st to a full house. When Bjork walked in behind me, I figured it was a good place to be, and sure enough, the evening-long work, 1969, was an event that was well-conceived and executed. Alarm… takes the step that so many audience members seem to desire: explaining things; while at the same time doing things that are outside the realm of what most audiences see: innovative performance.
The title of the program, 1969, is the result of the band’s desire to focus on one year during which history and the arts went through dramatic changes (another year that were considered was 1945). The theme that emerged from 1969 was “revolution” and the band drew on music from Berio, Stockhausen, Bernstein, Wolf, Stravinsky, the Beatles and their own keyboardist, John Orfe, for the musical fare. The band is very tech-savvy, and 1969 is a multi-media piece. A colleague told me he last saw them in an ipod symphony of sorts; this work pairs a typical classical orchestral setup with a continuous power-point style backdrop (granted that your average marketing pro doesn’t have this kind of typographical acumen — the visuals were beautiful).
Conceptually the piece is right on. Alarm Will Sound’s Managing Director, Gavin Chuck, prefaced the work by saying the group will be working on this material for a while; that we were seeing it at the beginning of the process. I think it’s kind of a cheap caveat, but okay. As a work in progress, 1969 is interesting. The evening began and ended with a play on long notes. It began with an excerpt from Kalheinz Stockhausen’s “Aus den sieben Tagen: Meeting Point,” and the group entered one by one on the note and left similarly at the end of the evening with the sound moving from tonic confusion to harmony (a second excerpt from the Stockhausen piece, “Set Sail for the Sun”). Variations on the Beatles’ “Michelle” with classical treatment were notable and featured first violinist Courtney Orlando as an equally talented soprano. The group shared some of its background research with us. A piece from Bernstein’s Mass was introduced with the story of a radical priest whose letters from prison served as the basis of “Epistle,” arranged in this performance by Stefan Freund, also the cellist. The song was performed by Michael Harley, another instrumentalist, who sang in addition to his duties on bassoon.
The band was very likeable. They balanced a sincerity with lightheartedness. The topic of revolution, though, is not a lighthearted topic. “Revolution 9,” the Beatles’ work, arranged by Matt Marks (horn player of Alarm…) was a dazzling display of orchestration and recreating sound effects and tape loops live. But the entire evening left me feeling less like I was present at a revolution than at the study of one. Which brings me back to the premise of the night: that it is a work in progress…
…as hopefully this review will be as I follow Alarm Will Sound from this point on…