Alan Pierson, Heard
Heard weaves together music and storytelling in a show built on deep and formative personal experiences that drive the music of eight wide-ranging composers working in America today. Coming from disparate parts of the world and working in eclectic styles, these composers represent a cross-section of America’s musical melting pot. Heard composes their stories and music into a rich portrait of American art and experience in the 21st century.
Program Notes
Heard weaves together music and storytelling in a show built on the deep and formative personal experiences that animate the music of eight wide-ranging composers working in America today. Coming from disparate parts of the world (Havana, East St. Louis, Seoul, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Camuy in Puerto Rico) and working in eclectic styles, these composers represent a cross-section of America’s musical melting pot. With its omnivorous musical appetites — Alarm Will Sound is renowned for collaborations with artists from Aphex Twin, to Medeski Martin & Wood, to Steve Reich — and passion for musical storytelling, Alarm Will Sound is the ideal guide for this adventurous event. “They exploded musical genres, made history come alive and demonstrated that art — original, vivid, reckless — can lift the grim clouds of current events,” wrote the LA Times about the ensemble. Building on Alarm Will Sound’s history of storytelling events at Carnegie Hall like 1969 and This Music Should Not Exist, Heard composes these eight composers’ music and stories into a rich portrait of American art and experience in the 21st century. |
Track List
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From the Creator
I love making shows that tell stories. My own connection to a piece is so often deepened by better understanding the human context around it: the world the composer lived in, what he or she felt the music to mean, and how it came to be. I’m always eager to share this context with other listeners too.
Heard began with a conversation with our longtime friend Tania León, who brought us a stimulating challenge: how could we make a show that would bring together in a coherent package the widest range of music being created by composers in America today? As I began to explore the music we wanted to present, and to discuss the works with the composers, I was struck by how many of them reflected on deeply personal, formative experiences. None of this was music that was new to us, and many of these composers have been in our musical family for ages. But the stories were surprisingly unfamiliar. Chris and I have had countless deep conversations about music and musical roots and Alarm Will Sound’s mission since he joined the ensemble in 2008. How did I not know about this experience that had first fired his passion for music, and inspired him with the heights that performance could achieve? Texu was a dear friend with whom Alarm Will Sound had collaborated countless times since we first met him at the Mizzou International Composers Festival in 2012. He even took my whole family on a personal tour of Seoul. How had I never had any inkling of these emotional contours around the genesis of his musical journey? And Damon Davis has been talking with me about his vision for Ligeia Mare ever since AWS first came to St. Louis in 2014 (“I wanna know how we can all come together to do something extremely awesome,” he wrote after that first concert); how had I never known about these life experiences that rooted this work?
It turns out that it’s easy not to know deep things about even the collaborators and friends who are dearest to us. I’d never have guessed any of these stories from the music itself. But learning about them enriched my experience of the music, and in many cases transformed how I performed it. It seemed imperative to find a way to bring this context into the show itself, and I wondered: could these stories themselves be the thread to tie together all of the music on this show into a holistic experience?
My past storytelling events have always adopted a unifying voice throughout. But I’ve never before created a storytelling show focused on so many composers from such widely different backgrounds. So for Heard, I created a space where each composer could have their story heard in a way that felt authentic to them. Each of their voices has become an inextricable part of the performance.
Heard began with a conversation with our longtime friend Tania León, who brought us a stimulating challenge: how could we make a show that would bring together in a coherent package the widest range of music being created by composers in America today? As I began to explore the music we wanted to present, and to discuss the works with the composers, I was struck by how many of them reflected on deeply personal, formative experiences. None of this was music that was new to us, and many of these composers have been in our musical family for ages. But the stories were surprisingly unfamiliar. Chris and I have had countless deep conversations about music and musical roots and Alarm Will Sound’s mission since he joined the ensemble in 2008. How did I not know about this experience that had first fired his passion for music, and inspired him with the heights that performance could achieve? Texu was a dear friend with whom Alarm Will Sound had collaborated countless times since we first met him at the Mizzou International Composers Festival in 2012. He even took my whole family on a personal tour of Seoul. How had I never had any inkling of these emotional contours around the genesis of his musical journey? And Damon Davis has been talking with me about his vision for Ligeia Mare ever since AWS first came to St. Louis in 2014 (“I wanna know how we can all come together to do something extremely awesome,” he wrote after that first concert); how had I never known about these life experiences that rooted this work?
It turns out that it’s easy not to know deep things about even the collaborators and friends who are dearest to us. I’d never have guessed any of these stories from the music itself. But learning about them enriched my experience of the music, and in many cases transformed how I performed it. It seemed imperative to find a way to bring this context into the show itself, and I wondered: could these stories themselves be the thread to tie together all of the music on this show into a holistic experience?
My past storytelling events have always adopted a unifying voice throughout. But I’ve never before created a storytelling show focused on so many composers from such widely different backgrounds. So for Heard, I created a space where each composer could have their story heard in a way that felt authentic to them. Each of their voices has become an inextricable part of the performance.