Alarm Will Sound is a GRAMMY®-winning 22-member band committed to innovative performances and recordings of today’s music. They have established a reputation for performing demanding music with energetic skill. The New York Times says that Alarm Will Sound is “one of the most vital and original ensembles on the American music scene.”
With classical skill and unlimited curiosity, Alarm Will Sound takes on music from a wide variety of styles. Its repertoire ranges from European to American works, from the arch-modernist to the pop-influenced. The group itself includes many composer-performers, which allows for an unusual degree of insight into the creation and performance of new work.
Alarm Will Sound is the resident ensemble at the Mizzou International Composers Festival. Held each July at the University of Missouri in Columbia, the festival features eight world premieres by early-career composers.
Alarm Will Sound may be heard on twenty-two recordings, including Land of Winter, featuring music by Donnacha Dennehy for which they won the 2026 GRAMMY® for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance. Their genre-bending, critically acclaimed Acoustica features live-performance arrangements of music by electronica guru Aphex Twin.
Recent performances reflect Alarm Will Sound’s boundary-pushing ethos. In October 2022, they presented an overnight performance of John Luther Adams’ Ten Thousand Birds at the Paris Philharmonie during Nuit Blanche, playing four cycles between 9 PM and 4 AM for thousands of audience members. In September 2024, they premiered David T. Little’s What Belongs to You at the Modlin Center for the Performing Arts, based on Garth Greenwell’s novel, featuring GRAMMY-winning tenor Karim Sulayman and directed by Mark Morris. The work was featured in The New York Times. In 2023, Alarm Will Sound performed Mary Kouyoumdjian’s Pulitzer-finalist Paper Pianos at EMPAC, a multimedia exploration of refugee experiences. Additionally, their 2024 Sun Dogs tour, created in collaboration with composers Arooj Aftab, Daniel Wohl, Devonté Hynes, and Rafiq Bhatia, and done in partnership with Liquid Music, highlighted groundbreaking collaborations blending music and film across four U.S. cities..
Alarm Will Sound has been presented by Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, (le) Poisson Rouge, Miller Theatre, Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Kitchen, the Bang on a Can Marathon, Disney Hall, Kimmel Center, Library of Congress, the Walker Arts Center, Cal Performances, Stanford Lively Arts, Duke Performances, and the Warhol Museum. International tours include the Holland Festival, Sacrum Profanum, Moscow’s Art November, St. Petersburg’s Pro Arte Festival, and the Barbican.
The members of the ensemble have also demonstrated our commitment to education through residency performances and activities at the Eastman School of Music, Manhattan School of Music, Princeton University, New York University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
For more information and to join the mailing list, visit Alarm Will Sound’s website at www.alarmwillsound.com.
Please note: Biographies are based on information provided to the CSOA by the artists or their representatives. More current information may be available on websites of the artists or their management.
