For my arrangement of The Beatles’ Revolution 9 for Alarm Will Sound:
“A French-horn player whimpered like a newborn into one microphone, as a violinist murmured through a trumpet mute into another mike so that her voice sounded watery and indistinct. A percussionist smashed and stirred a bagful of broken glass with a hammer, and a clarinetist blurted the tune to “There’s a place in France / Where the naked ladies dance.” A sober young man, unaccustomed to performing, wielded one of those old-fashioned squeezable car horns and in an impassive baritone kept repeating: “Number nine … number nine.” Yes, you got it: Welcome to the live, all-acoustic version of Lennon and McCartney’s foray into musique concrète, “Revolution 9,” as performed with irresistible panache by the twenty-member ensemble Alarm Will Sound.
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Nonchalantly virtuosic and unburdened by conventional wisdom, the players in Alarm Will Sound invent challenges that some might regard as mystically pointless—Matthew Marks’s obsessively detailed transcription of “Revolution 9,” for instance. The payoff lies in performances that make complexity sound crystalline, that dismantle a piece’s purity but leave its energy intact.” – Justin Davidson (from a feature on the arrangement and Alarm Will Sound’s 1969 show)
“Alarm Will Sound kicked off the proceedings at 6 p.m. with a movement from John Adams’s “Son of Chamber Symphony,” and much later offered a staggeringly creative arrangement of the Beatles’ abstract sound collage “Revolution 9,” arranged by Matt Marks.” – Steve Smith
“the group ended the night with an amazing transcription of the famous experimental track from “the White Album.” Yes, they performed tape loops and all, in a totally live performance conducted expertly by Alan Pierson. It was stunning, and I think Alarm Will Sound has a bona fide hit on its hands…” – Andrew Druckenbrod
For The Little Death:
Corey Dargel interviews me on the Naxos blog.
My interview with New Amsterdam Records about the project.
For The Adventures of Albert Fish:
“brilliantly simultaneously creepy and funny” – Galen H. Brown
French Horn Press:
“In the new horn concerto there were lots of wonderful moments, especially those involving murky glistening harmonies from the four natural horns in the orchestra plus the soloist (Matt Marks) and passages where other instruments” – Paul Griffiths
“Matt Marks played brilliantly” – Martin Bernheimer
“chameleonic soloist Matt Marks at times sounded like a Swiss alpenhornist and at other times channeled the blue cool of Miles Davis.” – Ben Finane
