On my shelves is a curious book called The Music Lover's Birthday Book, and I have got into the habit of glancing at it most days to discover when its featured composers and performers were born. The book is full of beautifully chosen photographs and paintings, one of which, La Parade de Cirque: Invitation to the Sideshow by Georges Seurat caught my eye on the very day that I was asked to compose a piece for the Metropolitan Wind Symphony.

This picture features a strange and rather sinister-looking Trombone player in a curious pointed hat, accompanied by several other shadowy wind players. A Wind Band work inspired by the paintings of Seurat seemed to suggest possibilities, so I looked at all his other paintings, including, of course, A Sunday Afternoon on La Grande Jatte -- which I had to reject, as I could not get Stephen Sondheim's marvelous musical Sunday in the Park with George, which was inspired by this great masterpiece, out of my mind.

When considering the second movement two other paintings caught my eye:

Le Cirque, left unfinished at Seurat's tragically early death in 1891 at the age of 32, and Le Chahut, which depicts a curiously stylized Can-Can in full swing, accompanied by a pit orchestra. The phrase "faire du chahut" means "to make a racket", which I think I have achieved in the second movement!

I felt that the first movement needed a more gentle, open-air theme, to contrast with the sinister, claustrophobic, gas-lit sideshow of La Parade, and I found what I was looking for at The National Gallery in London, which has long housed Seurat's huge canvas A Bathing Place, Asnières. This wonderful picture presents a cool, blue river Seine lapping a sun-drenched green, grassy bank, on which pale-skinned bathers, stare fixedly across to the opposite shore, while the smoke from the distant factory chimneys reminds us -- and them -- that this industrial Parisian suburb is somewhat removed from The Garden of Eden.

I have not attempted to slavishly reproduce Seurat's paintings in music, nor essay in sound his astounding pointillist technique, but certainly these four paintings were the inspiration for a piece that I greatly enjoyed writing.

The Harvard Independent, November 12, 1998

Woolfenden's world premiere of "French Impressions" took the MWS in another direction, presenting the audience with programmatic music - in this case of the French impressionist Georges Seurat, Le Cirque, Le Chahut, and Une Baignade (A Bathing Place). "French Impressions" was as fun and light-hearted as Woolfenden himself. (Before its performance, he joked on how he almost named the piece"Que Sera, Seurat?'). The first movement, "Parade," was playfully carefree, meandering from a sauntering, airy character to climactic, grand proportions, absent-mindedly back and forth - in that sense, decidedly "impressionistic." The second movement, "Can-Can," was even more festive, to the point of being riotous. Loyal to the can-can style, the various sections excitedly intertwined melodies, parading around the central theme, twirling and whirling the harmonies. In the last phrases of the "Can-Can," the symphony even effected the classic accelerando while repeating the melody to the impressively resounding finish.

Clarino Magazine, May 1, 1999

French Impressions was inspired by four paintings by Georges Seurat... The "Prelude" is flowing, full of melancholy and based on a short thematic idea which Woolfenden always presents in a new light. The lively "Can Can" is an original independent movement, owing little to Offenbach's example.