Alarm Will Sound presents 'Mind Out of Matter' with music by Scott Johnson

For immediate release

Scott Johnson’s

Mind Out of Matter

“A tour de force on the idea of ideas.” - Boston Globe

Alarm Will Sound is excited to announce the release of composer Scott Johnson’s Mind Out of Matter on Tzadik – John Zorn’s record label dedicated to avant garde and experimental music. Renowned philosopher Daniel C. Dennett’s own recorded voice delivers not only his ideas but also the melodies and rhythms at the heart of the music. Mind Out of Matter will be available on iTunes, Amazon, and Tzadik.com on February 23.

Mind Out of Matter is a 74-minute, eight movement suite, that brings together Scott Johnson’s mix of pop sensibilities and classical rigor with his groundbreaking work in transcribing speech into music. Musical styles as disparate as retro-funk and Baroque recitative blend to illuminate Dennett's central claim: just as living organisms evolve in the physical environment, ideas and traditions compete within ecosystems made up of human minds and cultures. Those evolutionary forces shape the religious ideas that populate our minds, multiply within our cultures, and spread like viruses — sometimes to our benefit, sometimes not. 

ABOUT SCOTT JOHNSON

Scott Johnson (composer) has been a pioneering voice in the new relationship being forged between the classical tradition and the popular culture that surrounds it. An early advocate of using rock instruments and technology in scored composition, he has appeared as a virtuosic electric guitarist in many of his pieces. His early work introduced the idea of instrumental writing based on sampled speech, and later works continue to develop his musical gene-splicing, blending complex and intertwined chamber music with a rock band's hall-filling wall of sound. Compositions featuring sampled voice include the groundbreaking John Somebody, as well as Americans and How It Happens (commissioned by the Kronos Quartet). 

Underneath the music lies a basic insight: the evolution of classical composition has always been shaped by its environments, and living composers are remaining true to that legacy when they draw on the ever-changing ecosystem of our own popular musics. Speaking the languages of contemporary culture will help create a picture of our times, as composers of the past did with theirs. 

Johnson's music has been commissioned and performed internationally by ensembles such as the Kronos Quartet, the Bang On A Can All-Stars, Alarm Will Sound, and the American Composers Orchestra, as well as his own groups. Awards include fellowships from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Guggenheim Foundation, and a Koussevitsky award. Johnson has also lectured at leading conservatories and universities, including San Francisco and Peabody Conservatories, Senzaku Ongaku Daigaku, New York University, The Manhattan School of Music, and Yale University. 

ABOUT DANIEL C. DENNETT

Daniel C. Dennett is University Professor and Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, and Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. He studied philosophy at Harvard and Oxford, and taught at U.C. Irvine from 1965 to 1971, when he moved to Tufts, where he has taught ever since, aside from periods visiting at Harvard, Pittsburgh, Oxford, the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, the London School of Economics and the American University of Beirut. He is currently a member of the external faculty of the Santa Fe Institute and New College of the Humanities in London. 

He co-edited The Mind's I with Douglas Hofstadter in 1981. He is the author of over four hundred scholarly articles on various aspects on the mind, published in journals ranging from Artificial Intelligence and Behavioral and Brain Sciences to Poetics Today and The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. He also wrote, with Linda LaScola, Caught in the Pulpit: Leaving Belief Behind (2013), which is being adapted for the off-Broadway stage. 

He was the Co-founder (in 1985) and Co-director of the Curricular Software Studio at Tufts, and has helped to design museum exhibits on computers for the Smithsonian Institution, the Museum of Science in Boston, and the Computer Museum in Boston. The Netherlands honored him with the Erasmus Prize, the nation’s highest academic honor, in 2012. 

ABOUT ALARM WILL SOUND

Alarm Will Sound is “one of the most vital and original ensembles on the American music scene” (The New York Times). A 20-member band committed to innovative performances and recordings of today’s music, they have established a reputation for performing demanding music with energetic skill. 

With classical skill and unlimited curiosity, Alarm Will Sound takes on music from a wide variety of styles. “Stylistically omnivorous and physically versatile” (The Log Journal), their repertoire comes from around the world, and ranges from the arch-modernist to the pop-influenced. Since its inception, Alarm Will Sound has been associated with composers at the forefront of contemporary music. 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 has performed at festivals around the world including the Holland Festival, Sacrum Profanum (Krakow), the BAM Next Wave Festival, and the Mizzou International Composers Festival. The ensemble served as artists-in-residence at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from 2013-2014.

Alarm Will Sound can be heard on over a dozen recordings including Splitting Adams, a collaboration with the Peabody award-winning podcast, Meet the Composer; the premiere recording of Steve Reich’s Radio Rewrite; and Acoustica, their genre-bending, critically-acclaimed album that features live-performance arrangements of music by electronica guru Aphex Twin.

Alan Pierson, conductor and artistic director; Erin Lesser, flute, piccolo; Christa Robinson, oboe; Chad Smith, clarinet, saxophone; Elisabeth Stimpert, clarinets; Michael Harley, bassoon; David Byrd-Marrow, French horn; Sam Jones, trumpet; Michael Clayville, trombone; Chris Thompson, drums, percussion; Matt Smallcomb, percussion; Luke Rinderknecht, percussion; John Orfe, piano, keyboard; Courtney Orlando, violin, triangle; Caleb Burhans, violin, electric guitar; Nadia Sirota, viola, shaker; Stefan Freund, cello; Miles Brown, double bass, electric bass; Gavin Chuck, managing director 

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INTERVIEW REQUESTS: Contact Michael Clayville at michaelclayville@alarmwillsound.com, 717-831-8461.

IMAGES: Available by request or for download at alarmwillsound.com/press.

A Tzadik Spectrum Series release, TZ 4021

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www.scottjohnsoncomposer.com
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