Alarm Will Sound | A Conversation about "1969" with Robert Fink and the Alarm Will Sound creative team @alarmwillsound | Uploaded November 2021 | Updated October 2024, 17 hours ago.
Robert Fink, current Chair of the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music’s Minor in the Music Industry and President of the US Branch of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM-US), joins Andrew Kupfer, Nigel Maister, and Alan Pierson, creators and developers of "1969," in a discussion about the work.
About "1969":
On a winter’s day nearly 50 years ago, the Beatles and composer Karlheinz Stockhausen arranged to meet in New York City to plan a joint concert. No such performance would ever take place. But its tantalizing promise is the departure point for Alarm Will Sound’s 1969. Told through their own words, music, and images, 1969 is the story of great musicians—John Lennon, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Paul McCartney, Luciano Berio, Yoko Ono, and Leonard Bernstein—striving for a new music and a new world amidst the social and political ferment of the late 1960s.
1969 is both a concert and a work of theater. As archival video and photographs are projected around the stage, the members of the ensemble play their instruments, sing, and voice the words of the composers and others in their circle, woven together to tell the story of how these artists galvanized one another and responded through their music to the momentous events of the day—the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, the Vietnam War, the riots at the 1968 Democratic Convention, the election of Richard Nixon. All of the artists suffered critically for their efforts, and yet, in the end, they would transform music and transcend their time. Fifty years after 1969, the themes of our production are even more relevant in the current cultural and political climate.
Robert Fink, current Chair of the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music’s Minor in the Music Industry and President of the US Branch of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM-US), joins Andrew Kupfer, Nigel Maister, and Alan Pierson, creators and developers of "1969," in a discussion about the work.
About "1969":
On a winter’s day nearly 50 years ago, the Beatles and composer Karlheinz Stockhausen arranged to meet in New York City to plan a joint concert. No such performance would ever take place. But its tantalizing promise is the departure point for Alarm Will Sound’s 1969. Told through their own words, music, and images, 1969 is the story of great musicians—John Lennon, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Paul McCartney, Luciano Berio, Yoko Ono, and Leonard Bernstein—striving for a new music and a new world amidst the social and political ferment of the late 1960s.
1969 is both a concert and a work of theater. As archival video and photographs are projected around the stage, the members of the ensemble play their instruments, sing, and voice the words of the composers and others in their circle, woven together to tell the story of how these artists galvanized one another and responded through their music to the momentous events of the day—the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, the Vietnam War, the riots at the 1968 Democratic Convention, the election of Richard Nixon. All of the artists suffered critically for their efforts, and yet, in the end, they would transform music and transcend their time. Fifty years after 1969, the themes of our production are even more relevant in the current cultural and political climate.
