After 25 years of performing together, chamber orchestra Alarm Will Sound has received their first-ever Grammy nomination. The chamber orchestra is nominated for the category Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance for their album “Donnacha Dennehy: Land of Winter.”
Stefan Freund and Bill Kalinkos, faculty members at the University of Missouri, are two of the 21 members of Alarm Will Sound. Freund, the cellist for the group, is a professor of composition at the School of Music and artistic director of the Mizzou New Music Initiative. Kalinkos, who plays clarinet for the group, is an adjunct clarinet instructor and co-director of the Mizzou Creative Improvisation Collective.
For Kalinkos, the nomination was a surprise.
“We’ve been a group for 25 years, and, you know, we believe in the work that we’re doing, but [it’s] not always that it reaches that many people,” Kalinkos said. “The people who listen to Alarm Will Sound are devoted fans, but it doesn’t have, like, a broad appeal … There’s definitely excitement involved with it and surprise.”
The group was founded in 1996 at the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music. According to Freund, the group enjoyed performing together, and wanted to continue after graduation. With the help of the music school’s director, they formed a professional group.
They performed for the first time as Alarm Will Sound in 2001, getting their name after a member spotted “Alarm Will Sound” on an emergency exit sign. They’ve traveled to perform in places like Russia, Italy, France, Germany, Poland, South Korea and China.
The album, which is also nominated for Best Contemporary Classical Composition, is broken up into 12 movements. Each movement is titled a month of the year: “I. December” starts out the piece, flowing through months until it ends in “XII. November.”
“It all flows … but they’re very different characters in these 12 different movements,” Freund said. “We have the joy of the summer months and the darkness and bitter sweetness of the winter months.”
Composer Donnacha Dennehy created the piece for the chamber orchestra based on the different months and seasons in his home country, Ireland. The group later decided to record the piece as an album.
Receiving the Grammy nomination was a different kind of acknowledgment to Freund.
“For over 20 years, we’ve been getting great publicity, but we’ve never gotten a Grammy nomination before,” Freund said. “So this is real vindication for all the work that we’ve done. It’s wonderful to receive that recognition.”
After the Grammys on Feb. 1, Alarm Will Sound will continue to perform across the country. They will return to Columbia July 23 to perform at the Mizzou International Composers Festival.
