Agony

instrumentation: three performers, fifteen pieces of paper, thirteen chess pieces (seven white pawns, one white bishop, one white knight, one white king, one black pawn, one black queen, one black king), four cups, four chairs, three tap bells, three pencils, two woodblocks, one gavel, one cellphone or MIDI device that can use TouchOSC (to run Max/MSP), and one table.
duration: c. 17’00”
dedication: to James May and Carter
premiere: May 21st, 2018 by AmiEnsemble; New Music Gathering at Berklee College, Boston, MA

Agony is the compressed musical depiction of the Law & Order episode bearing the same name. Law & Order is one of many long-lasting crime shows filled with archetypes packed into a familiar, repetitive, form. Agony takes advantage of this pervasive genre by performing the seventy-page screenplay as quickly as possible along with choreographed percussion to demonstrate narrative and progression in an abstract pairing. In this way, the audience should not necessarily understand the drama explicitly, but instead, in broad, brush strokes and generalizations.