Sequenza21/The Contemporary Classical Music Weekly

Alarm Will Sound: A Lesson in How to Sell New Music

"Exciting" and "fun" are not words that are frequently used to describe new music concerts but Thursday night's Alarm Will Sound concert at Zankel Hall proved that clever programming and hard work can overcome even the teensy-weensy attention spans of the multi-tasking, podcasting, club hopping, instant messaging, iPod generation.

We have had lengthy discussions in the Composers Forum about the importance of venue in attracting audiences for postclassic music, especially the relative merits of clubs versus concert halls, but neither is exactly perfect. Most young people find the notion of going to sit quietly for two hours in a darkened room with a bunch of strangers staring at people in black outfits blowing into horns and hacking away at fiddles to be not only some kind of archaic ritual, but downright punitive. This is SERIOUS MUSIC, children. Pay attention.

Clubs offer a freer, more interactive environment but they have their downsides. Drinkers, talkers, noisy waitresses, bad acoustics, no payment for musicians, much less composers. And, of course, there is always the 25 percent of the audience that is waiting for you to stop horsing around and play "Stairway to Heaven."

What Alan Pierson and his talented Alarm Will Sound crew proved on Thursday was that it is possible to reach a concert hall audience on both a visceral as well as intellectual level and to tap into some of the strengths of both worlds. In the process, they offered some valuable insights into how to stage a compelling new music concert.

Build the program around a "coherent narrative:" Modern homo sapiens crave connections and they respond to stories that tie loose pieces of information together. Doesn't have to be a complicated story or make an earthshaking point. Thursday's concert was "about" musical odd couples--composers that most audience members wouldn't necessarily think of as being related. Frank Zappa and Edgard Var�se. John Cage and John Cale. Wolfgang Rihm and John Adams. Ghanaian composer Bernard Woma, master of the gyil and composer, clarinetist and band leader Derek Bermel, who years ago traveled to Ghana to apprentice with him and in 1994, created an orchestral composition, Dust Dances, inspired by traditional Ghanaian gyil melodies. It didn't really matter that the Bermel piece that AWS actually played--Three Rivers--had virtually no traditional African influence or that the link between Rihm's splattershot European expressionism and Adams' cool West Coast post-minimalism couldn't be more tenuous.

Our buddy and frequent contributor Frank J. Oteri did a terrific job of tying the pieces together in the program notes, although relating Cage to Cale required a triple axle to Tokyo, Yoko Ono, Fluxus, and La Monte Young before landing tentatively in the East Village.

Keep them doggies rolling: Just because the audience is sitting still doesn't mean the performers have to. At virtually no point in the evening were all 22 members of the group on stage at the same time. Pierson had musicians roving throughout the hall constantly which not only produced some innovative sounds but added a touch of engaging theater. Audience members never knew if the person next to them was going to suddenly whip out a trumpet and blow them away. So dispersed were the musical legions that Pierson conducted Var�se's Int�grales from the middle row of seats on the orchestra level. As a consequence of being a band in motion, Pierson's mobile work force performed much of the concert without sheet music, which is the musical equivalent of working the high wire without a net. The risk was high; the reward exhilarating.

The band cleverly used highly choreographed peformances of Cage's 0�00� (4�33� No. 2) and Variations III as a cover for resetting the stage between the Zappa and Woma and Var�se and Cale pieces, giving the whole program a seamless feel and no doubt confusing the hell out of the stagehands union.

Give 'em some visuals: Purists may object but giving the audience something to do while listening besides staring blankly at a stage immediately makes for a more memorable performance. Even the Rolling Stones realize you have to give them some lights, camera, action show biz. By using photos, short quotes about the works being played, and simple charts to show connections, AWS managed to tell its story in an engaging way without seeming pompous or verbose.

There were a number of other factors that contributed to the success of the evening, but this is a blog so I'll wrap it up. Everybody loves great performers and AWS has a number of standout "stars" in the making. Pierson has been on a fast track since he took up music seriously at Eastman a few years back. Caleb Burhans is an astonishing violinist and guitarist and Courtney Orlando was ubiquitous--at various points in the evening playing violin, keyboard, a strange whoopee cushion like drum, and singing Dennis DeSantis' arrangement of a selection of John Cale's music for the Andy Warhol movie "Kiss." Courtney is also as cute as a speckled pup on a red fire engine, an observation I get to make since I am old and harmless and from the pre-sensitive cave man generation. And, anyway, I've never heard of a performer who lost points for being too attractive.

Darcy James Argue has a great critical review here and Allan Kozinn has a decent review here.

posted by Jerry Bowles 2/19/2006