and works by the festival's guest composers, including Derek Bermel, Oscar Bettison, Martin Bresnick, Anna Clyne, Donnacha Dennehy, Erin Gee, Daniel Kellogg, Zhou Long, Nico Muhly, Roger Reynolds, Steven Stucky, and Augusta Read Thomas. In 2011 at Carnegie Hall, the group presented 1969, a multimedia event that uses music, images, text, and staging to tell the compelling story of great musicians—John Lennon, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luciano Berio, and Leonard Bernstein—striving for a new music and a new world amidst the turmoil of the late 1960s. 1969's unconventional approach combining music, history, and ideas has been critically praised by The New York Times ("...a swirling, heady meditation on the intersection of experimental and commercial spheres, and of social and aesthetic agendas.... a consistent wonder."), and the LA Times (“They exploded musical genres, made history come alive and demonstrated that art—original, vivid, reckless—can lift the grim clouds of current events, if only for two hours.”) Canzonas Americanas, their 2012 release on Cantaloupe features music by Derek Bermel whose eclectic approach draws on the musical traditions of Europe, North and South America, and Africa. The San Francisco Classical Voice says about Alarm Will Sound, "It's hard to imagine another ensemble that could handle the vast range of musical ingredients – including rock, Conlon Nancarrow–style layered rhythms, jazz, and especially world music influences ranging from Brazilian choros to West African balafon – that inform this wildly eclectic new document…" The Guardian says, "Bermel tends to build his music layer by layer, creating exhilaratingly complex instrumental textures, which Alarm Will Sound realise with great panache." Alarm Will Sound began their St. Louis Season in 2013 to complement their existing touring schedule and bring to the midwest the work they do around the country and abroad. The goal being to grow a local audience for contemporary performing arts. In St. Louis, AWS has presented concerts at The Sheldon Concert Hall, the Touhill Performing Arts Center and The Pageant. In the 2013–2014 season, Alarm Will Sound partnered with The Metropolitan Museum of Art and became artists-in-residence at the institution. Their season at the museum includes a performance entitled "The Permanent Collection," a concert of integral works for the sinfonietta; "All Steve Reich," featuring the NY premiere of Radio Rewrite; "Twinned," a collaboration with John Heginbotham, a Brooklyn-based choreographer who worked with Mark Morris; and "I Was Here I Was I," an opera with music by Kate Soper, and