Coming fresh off the group’s 2026 GRAMMY Award win for Best Chamber Music / Small Ensemble Performance (for “Donnacha Dennehy: Land Of Winter”), Alarm Will Sound — the 20-member band The New York Times calls “one of the most vital and original ensembles on the American music scene,” and which has spent 25 years dismantling boundaries between genres — launch AWS 25, a series of album releases and live performances that serve as a yearlong celebration of Alarm Will Sound’s 25th year. AWS 25 serves as both a reflection on the group’s varied, form-breaking work over its quarter-century existence as well as a glimpse into the expansive possibilities for their future.

Today, they announce their first AWS 25 release: Lift, out March 20 — an album built from two decades of music written by members of the ensemble itself. The album shows the band as architects of their own experimental infrastructure, featuring works by past and present members Matt Marks, Stefan Freund, John Orfe, Caleb Burhans, and others. It’s a showcase for Alarm Will Sound’s modular and experimental ethic, from a feedback-based work by sound engineer Daniel Neumann — written for the full Alarm Will Sound setup but no players: just an empty concert stage full of microphones — to Gavin Chuck’s adaptation of The Shaggs’ cult outsider anthem “Philosophy of the World,” which is out today as the project’s lead track. Revered and ridiculed in equal measure since its 1969 debut, The Shaggs’ fiercely unpolished vision becomes, in Alarm Will Sound’s hands, a meditation on authorship, imperfection, and what it means to make art outside the rules.

As Gavin Chuck shares: “Jason Price, my friend and a founding member of Alarm Will Sound, was a fan of The Shaggs, He told me their story of “accidental genius” and played me Philosophy of the World. My first reaction was, “What the hell is going on?!” That’s a question that motivates my favorite mode: discovery. So I opened my ears to listen for something other than virtuosity. Even if The Shaggs didn’t intend to make experimental music, they have inspired experimental listening in so many people. Arranging their original for Alarm Will Sound and including it on this album is a way to celebrate 25 years of experimental music-making and experimental listening that keeps our ears open.”

Listen to “Philosophy Of The World” here, and pre-order / pre-save Lift here.

Since their 2001 debut performing the music of Steve Reich at New York’s Miller Theatre, Alarm Will Sound has treated the concert hall less as a sanctuary and more as a laboratory. Over the past 25 years, they’ve translated Aphex Twin’s glitch-heavy electronic masterworks into blistering acoustic arrangements on their landmark 2005 album Acoustica; collaborated with Dirty Projectors on The Getty Address; built multimedia explorations of cultural rupture with projects like 1969, reframing Lennon, McCartney, Stockhausen, Ono, Berio, and Bernstein through the lens of political upheaval; and joined Björk onstage at Carnegie Hall to launch her Vulnicura world tour. Along the way, they’ve championed a generation of boundary-pushing composers and artists — from John Luther Adams and Meredith Monk to Jlin, Tyondai Braxton, Eartheater, and Tyshawn Sorey — continually expanding what a chamber ensemble can be.

Alarm Will Sound has moved fluidly between iconic concert halls and experimental spaces — from Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center to Brooklyn’s Roulette and the Bang on a Can Marathon — appearing everywhere from Disney Hall and the Walker Art Center to underground festival stages across Europe. International tours have taken them to the Barbican, Holland Festival, and Sacrum Profanum, underscoring their unusual position: equally at home inside classical institutions and at the edges of contemporary culture.

Learn more about Alarm Will Sound’s unique 25-year journey here.

Alarm Will Sound have also announced two special 25th Anniversary Concerts. The first will be on May 5 in St. Louis, MO at The Grandel (tickets here), and the second will be on May 7 in Brooklyn, NY at Roulette Intermedium (tickets here). More upcoming Alarm Will Sound live performances listed here and below.

The group will announce more AWS 25 projects throughout 2026.