Commissioned by the 2014 Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival for the FLUX Quartet

During the very cold winter of 2014, I was struck with a patient mood one afternoon and made a drawing that consists entirely of careful crosshatching using a very frayed pen. Viewed from a distance, the lines evoke a frenetic energy, not unlike the intricate layers of earth and ice that is characteristic of a gorge cliffside in Ithaca. Up close, however, this energy transforms into something steady and linear— the fragile lines now intersect boldly to form squares. This dramatic form is closely echoed in Escape-Landscape, where the listener 'escapes' the overall 'landscape' simply by going deeply into the sound object, beyond its shimmering surface.