Erinn Frechette, flute
Freya String Quartet:
Jason Neukom, violin I
Ashley Buckley, violin II
Jason Hohn, viola
Katya Janpoladyan, cello

A piece loosely based on a joke from one of the classic "Simpsons" episodes. A link to said joke: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acRnigpauiE

The flute plays the role of Bart Simpson, and the strings are the teachers, who pass on the message with increasingly nonsensical additions. Though the additions are meaningless, they nevertheless have an effect on the ensemble.

This piece is dedicated to my brother and sister, with whom I used to watch old Simpsons episodes back in the day.

Purple Monkey Dishwasher (2013) for flute and string quartet

Performers:
Weronika Balewski, flute/piccolo
Hamed Shadad, clarinet/bass clarinet
Cassandra McBride, violin
Simon Linn-Gerstein, cello
Kyle Johnson, piano/toy piano
Nicholas Gleason, percussion
Paul Watkins, conducting

Completed April 2014

Performed/recorded May 11, 2014 at Longy School of Music's Pickman Hall, Cambridge, MA

Nothing Major! (2014) for Pierrot ensemble + percussion

Performed by Empyrean Ensemble:
Jeff Anderle, clarinet/bass clarinet
Hrabba Atladottir, violin
Megan Shieh, percussion


The initial concept for this piece comes from a niche community that is dedicated to completing video games as fast as possible, a recording or play-through of which is known as a "speedrun". Speedruns are mainly attempted for the purposes of entertainment and competition. Running a game requires technical mastery, lots of practice to reach that level of mastery, planning and execution, stretching boundaries of what is possible/practical, and extending interest through new objectives. A great run meets these goals while displaying creativity, variability, surprising outcomes, and a very high level of handling awkward situations efficiently. These qualities are desirable in many other areas, including the creation of art. In some ways, speed runs do approximate a sort of art form--they can be balletic in some cases, showing beautiful movement and coordination. Some require a degree of improvisation when strategies do not go as planned. And some particularly broken games--that is, games whose speed runs utilize so many glitches and sequence breaks that very little of the original, developer-intended gameplay remains--are weirdly wonderful to watch.

There is a further subcategory of speedruns known as "playarounds," which make some speed sacrifices in order to increase the entertainment value. In writing this piece, I've sought to embody the aesthetic of such runs, subverting local goals and curbing climaxes while messing about and eventually reaching the intended ending, but not without some weird detours.

PS--This is originally titled "Playaround" because it is more in line with this specific subcategory of speed runs in terms of my thinking about its formal design and aesthetic. The concert production team changed the title, but I had also considered using the title they changed it to, so I left it alone.

Speed Run (2016) for clarinet/bass clarinet, violin, & percussion

Hi, potential listeners! I'm a composer in Boston whose musical interests include dense/transparent counterpoint, coincidental theatre, improvisation, non-linear narratives, forced audience participation, and purposefully inaccurate quotation, among others.

PaulWatkins

Popular tracks