Composer’s Note:

Around the time of the composition of the Four Sketches, I was working on several musical projects related to visual artists, in one case, the Dutch painter Mondrian, and in another the French painter Henri Rousseau. For the Four Sketches, I did not have a specific visual artist or painting in mind, but the process of linking art to music had become rather ingrained in this phase of my work, and I began to think of each brief movement of the piece in relation to an imagined visual conception. The four movement titles are: Fragments in Motion, Circles, Points and Lines, and Seen Through a Haze. Written in connection with a composer residency at California Summer Music’s excellent string program for high school and college-age students, it was premiered with great finesse by the 16 year-old violinist, Miriam Gerber.