Composer’s Note:

Turtle Crossing takes its inspiration from some illustrations the composer found while working on a fairy-tale opera on the French tale Blondine. Using musical material from that project and placing it in electroacoustic timbres served as the starting point for the piece. The accompanying video uses various additional historical illustrations and public domain photography to explore the kinds of stories that cultures tell about turtles and their relatives, and the bass clarinet responds to the different kinds of stories with contrasting materials in each section.