From the composer: “This was my first attempt at composing for stringed instruments. At the time of writing this piece, I just recently arrived in Winchester, VA for my first semester of graduate school at Shenandoah Conservatory” […] “Having spent my time primarily writing works for wind ensemble, my teacher felt a chamber piece was due. This was an exciting opportunity for me to limit myself to four voices and to communicate my musical ideas with as much accuracy as possible given the exposed nature of the instrumentation. I found that it is much easier to identify and diagnose contrapuntal errors when you are only having to organize four different colors and no percussion!

The title ‘Guilty Pleasures’ comes primarily from the fact that I ripped myself off – my very first commission was a piece I wrote in 2019 for West Forsyth High School; and like every young composer, the piece was more like several different pieces that were never fully developed, all crammed into a ten minute window and titled. So, I ripped off one of my favorite sections that featured a strange tritone ostinato and decided to use that for my quartet.” […] “This piece turned out to be quite the learning experience and in the span of the couple of weeks it took me to write it, I noticed myself showing up later and later to my classes…“just one more note; I’ll forget it if I don’t put it in now!”, which also aided in my titling of the music.”