Alarm Will Sound will celebrate its recent Nonesuch debut, a/rhythmia, with a free album release party and listening event at New York City's (Le) Poisson Rouge on October 18. "Within three or four measures, the riot is in full swing," San Francisco Classical Voice says of the album. "This is totally engaging stuff ... tons of fun."

Alarm Will Sound makes its full-length Nonesuch debut today with the release of a/rhythmia, on which the group performs 14 pieces from composers spanning six centuries, all of which explore the concept of “arrhythmia”: “want of rhythm or regularity, specifically of the pulse.” The resulting work upends order and expectation, often taking ideas akin to minimalism and refracting them through a fun-house mirror.

Nonesuch will release a/rhythmia, the new album from Alarm Will Sound, the 20-member group described by the New York Times as “one of the most vital and original ensembles on the American music scene," on September 15; it is available to pre-order now in the Nonesuch Store. On the album are works by Michael Gordon, Conlon Nancarrow, Benedict Mason, György Ligeti, and Autechre, among others, that challenge in playful and often dazzling ways conventional notions of rhythm and pulse.

Alarm Will Sound gave the world premiere performance of John Adams's Son of Chamber Symphony last weekend at Stanford University, and the reviews continue to roll in. The San Francisco Chronicle, calls the new piece “vivacious,” writing that it “bursts with the technical prowess and cogent wit of the composer's finest efforts.” The Financial Times points to the group's prowess in pulling off the "dangerously exhilarating" piece with aplomb. The San Jose Mercury News praises "the crackerjack new-music ensemble."

This past Friday, John Adams's Son of Chamber Symphony received its world premiere at Stanford University, and, writes Los Angeles Times staff writer Mark Swed, the piece is "a chip off the old block." The composer wrote his original Chamber Symphony in 1992 while studying Schoenberg and overhearing the Carl Stalling–penned score coming from the Looney Tunes cartoons his son was watching in the other room, but the new piece, writes Swed, "is pure Adams."

This Friday night, Alarm Will Sound will make its Stanford University debut with the world premiere of John Adams's Son of Chamber Symphony, which the composer wrote for the innovative ensemble. Adams's first Chamber Symphony received its world premiere at The Hague in 1993. Also on Friday's program at Stanford's Dinkelspiel Auditorium are works by Conlon Nancarrow, Michael Gordon, and Aphex Twin.