School of Music faculty, members of Grammy-nominated ensemble, are helping make Missouri a leader in new music

By Cary Littlejohn

Jan. 27, 2026
Contact: Cary Littlejohn, [email protected]
Photos by Alarm Will Sound

At the University of Missouri, music students learn by performing alongside some of today’s most respected composers and artists.

Now, they can study with not one but two members of a Grammy-nominated ensemble.

Stefan Freund and Bill Kalinkos, both faculty members in the College of Arts and Science’s School of Music, are founding members of the 20-person ensemble Alarm Will Sound that was nominated for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance for its album “Land of Winter,” written by composer Donnacha Dennehy.

“We’ve been a group for 25 years, and we’ve released more than 20 albums,” Freund, the artistic director of the Mizzou New Music Initiative and professor of music composition, said. “This nomination feels like recognition of a long body of work and a collaborative process that has always been about developing new music.”

For the past 15 years, Alarm Will Sound has also served as ensemble-in-residence for the annual Mizzou International Composers Festival and is in residence at Mizzou each January. Since 2010, Alarm Will Sound has performed 116 resident composer premieres and 38 works by guest composers.

This year marks the first time the group has been nominated for a Grammy, but both Mizzou members made it clear that the recognition was the reward for the group’s hard work, not the motivation behind it.

“We are playing the music we believe in,” Kalinkos, co-director of the Mizzou Creative Improvisation Collective and clarinet instructor, said. “That’s what matters.”

That type of creativity sums up the entire ethos of the Mizzou New Music Initiative, a set of programs designed to establish Mizzou and the state of Missouri as a hub for the music of tomorrow. 

“The University of Missouri is an incubator of new music,” Freund said. “Donnacha Dennehy has been a guest composer at the Mizzou International Composers Festival multiple times. We built a relationship with him that led to Alarm Will Sound first reading “Land of Winter” at the Missouri Theatre in 2022. All of this happened thanks to the initiative.”

Those programs bring new opportunities to the public.

“Dr. Jeanne Cairns Sinquefield, who has generously invested in our programs, has a great saying: To have new music, you have to have composers. You have to have performers. You have to have an audience,” Freund said. “Our work with all kinds of people at different skill levels makes Missouri relevant for new music. Through her generosity and support from the Sinquefield Charitable Foundation, we can offer these wonderful programs.”

Mizzou students directly benefit from those programs, particularly the New Music Ensemble.

“The students of the New Music Ensemble are all fully funded assistantships through the initiative,” Freund said. “Their job is to perform in the ensemble. During the Mizzou International Composers Festival, the students work with the guest composers we bring in — acclaimed composers working at a very high level.”

The festival gives students a chance to discover composers they might not otherwise encounter, which becomes a valuable resource when programming repertoire for the New Music Ensemble, Kalinkos said.

“There are so many people still new to writing music — names that I wouldn’t otherwise know,” he said. “Discovering new composers is so important as we continue to innovate, and the initiative makes that possible.”

Alarm Will Sound’s Grammy nomination provides Freund and Kalinkos one more professional accomplishment to inspire their students and help reinforce Mizzou’s growing reputation as a hub of new music.“We work actively in the professional world performing, conducting and having our music played by major symphonies,” Freund said. “And we bring that experience into the classroom. Alarm Will Sound gives students a real connection to the world of contemporary music right here at Mizzou.”