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With Animated Film by Pell Osborn
Score
Program Note
Family – Rated R was commissioned and premiered in 1999 by the Wellesley Symphony Orchestra and featured as soloists the Charness Family Quintet (a flutist mother, a pianist father, two violinists, ages 9 and 14, and a cellist, age 12), and was later re-orchestrated for piano and string quartet. As a chamber work, the piece has been performed numerous times in Boston, as well as at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada, and in St. Petersburg, Russia, by John McDonald and the Arden String Quartet.
Why Family – Rated R? I have yet to meet a family “Rated G.” More importantly, “Rated R” means that you need to be accompanied by an adult until you are 18, and that is, essentially, what family is supposed to be—a kind of support system that facilitates your gradual entering into the complexities of a larger (at times threatening and alienating) world. And if all goes well, you ultimately become a productive and responsible part of that world and work to make it more whole. Any family or extended family strives to do this, including, I believe, the community at large.
— Howard Frazin
Select Performances
Wheaton College 2nd Annual New Music Festival
Cole Memorial Chapel
Norton, MA
April 6, 2011
Aurea Ensemble
Guy Urban, piano
St. Botolph Club
Boston, MA
May 18, 2005
Quartet X
John McDonald, piano
Composers in Red Sneakers
Pickman Hall
Cambridge, MA
October 5, 2004
Arden String Quartet
John McDonald, piano
With animated film by Pell Osborn
St. Petersburg Spring Festival
Rimsky-Korsakov State Conservatory
St. Petersburg, Russia
May 23, 2002
Arden String Quartet
John McDonald, piano
Tufts University
Alumnae Hall
Medford, MA
May 15, 2002
Arden String Quartet
John McDonald, piano
Longy SeptemberFest
Pickman Hall
Cambridge, MA
September 9, 2001
Olga Polonsky, vioin
John Holland, violins
Dimitar Petkov, viola
Laurence Picard, cello
Yuko Shinohara, piano
Banff Centre
Alberta, Canada
August 9, 2001
Andrea Neumann, violin
Alison Thompson, violin
Anita Dusevic, viola
Jenny Yoon, cello
Barbara Podgurski, piano
Longy Faculty Artist Series
Pickman Hall
Cambridge, MA
December 6, 2000
Rohan Gregory, violin
Mirabai Weismehl, violin
Scott Woolweaver, viola
Rafael Popper-Keizer cello
Laura Kennedy, piano
Longy Composition Faculty Showcase
Pickman Hall, Cambridge, MA
February 8, 2000
Arden String Quartet
Laura Kennedy, piano
Composers in Red Sneakers (Premiere)
Pickman Hall
Cambridge, MA
December 11, 1999
Arden String Quartet
Laura Kennedy, piano