Composer’s Note:

While living in Kln, Germany, I attended an exhibition of the artist Ursula Burghardt (1928 2008), who was the wife of composer Mauricio Kagel (1931 2008). She never considered herself an artist, anduntil her death in 2008, a mere two weeks after Kagels death, her works were virtually unknown. The first vestige, Ribbon Sculpture, was inspired by one of these drawings, and the melodic material is threadedthrough a series of sonorities, representative of the three-dimensional world in which she wanted to create.

While there, I also assisted in a series of recording sessions with the Luxembourg Philharmonie whereby they recorded three works by Japanese composer Toshio Hosokawa. The first, the Cello Concerto, contained three beautiful sonorities in its opening bars. I plucked these sonorities, and replanted them in my own sonic plot, and they serve as the basis of the first movement, Japanese Garden (karesansui).