Recording Date:
Sat 24 Jan 2004
A residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in 2001 provided the foundation for my String Quartet. The coordinators of the residency asked the participants to compose a short work for string quartet, no longer than five minutes, which was later read by the American String Quartet. At the time, I had been listening to and absorbing influences from the folk music of certain parts of Asia, including China and Indonesia. I began to think of ways to incorporate the exotic atmosphere created by that music into my own music, and the result what was to become the third movement of my Quartet, “Pizzicato.” Inspired by the success of the American String Quartet’s reading, I composed the first, second, and fourth movements over the next two years. Those three movements also have elements of Asian folk influence, and, in many instances, use the same scale patterns found in “Pizzicato.”