for piano and woodwind quintet. Par JALBERT PIERRE. Wind Dances is in seven short contrasting movements, each containing dance-like rhythms, both slow and fast. Having two sons who both play the clarinet, I've heard many a woodwind quintet, so I've been wanting to write for the medium for quite a while. In this instance, I also added my own instrument, the piano. The work opens with a fast movement containing driving rhythms in the winds, which are then answered by the piano. The second movement features colorful effects in the winds and piano (slap tongue, air sounds, muted tones) leading to a long extended lyrical line, gradually orchestrated to involve all the winds. The third movement is a dynamic scherzo, with a separate middle section similar to a traditional Trio section. The slowly unfolding fourth movement is the longest of the piece and anchors the middle of the work. The fifth movement is a kind of echo of the third movement, though this time the dynamic scherzo is high and light, rather than low and dark. The sixth movement is related to the second movement, and is basically a solo cadenza for the clarinet, with a few accompanimental gestures in the piano. The seventh and final movement reprises material from the first movement, this time with new and driving dance-like gestures added. - Pierre Jalbert / Niveau : Avancé / Répertoire / Flûte Traversière (Piccolo), Hautbois, Clarinette,

'Diacritical Marks was written for the Chiara Quartet in 2011 and is in eight short movements. I have a huge anxiety about string quartets; they are normally meant to be giant expressions of a composer’s emotional life. Here I focused on details: a tiny dot above a letter a tiny swivel of the bow. The first and last movements are energetic and driving and the middle movements are more lyrical rhapsodic and/or floating. The quartet is bound together by a piece of drone music found in movements 3 5 and 7 in which the second violin and the viola play an interlocking repeating pattern ad infinitum while the cello and first violin spin very long outrageous lines on top. The piece lasts just under 20 minutes.' —Nico Muhly

The second String Quartet by Joan Tower is a short but complex work addressing thoughts of death and loss written in memory of an old friend. The piece was commissioned by and is dedicated to the Tokyo String Quartet who firstperformed the piece in February 2002 at the 92nd Street Y New York City.Further inspired by the events in New York on September 11th 2001 the writing contains high sustained celestial material which slowly descends. Thiswriting is paired with more forceful driving and repetitive musical ideas that attempt to express the anger and pain that results from the loss of people in one's life.

Canticle. Par JALBERT PIERRE. Canticle (String Quartet No. 6) was commissioned by the Chiara String Quartet. It consists of seven movements, highly contrasting in character, with movements I and VII serving as similar bookends to the overall arch of the work. The piece opens with the quartet members striking various crotales, producing bell sounds that eventually blend with the string quartet – evoking the title, Canticle. The faster, pulse-oriented music requires the players to use glass rods on their instruments and at one point quickly moves back and forth between alternating rhythmic subdivisions, producing extremely rapid metric modulations. The last movement blends the string quartet with the bowing of the crotales to produce an ethereal, other-worldly finale to the canticle. Pierre Jalbert / Niveau : Avancé / Répertoire / Quatuor à Cordes