Written for the Cornell Festival Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Chris Kim

The initial idea for Eyelids are Islands came from two works by visual artist Giuseppe Penone entitled "Palpebra sinistra" and "Palpebra destra" (left and right eyelid). His works were part of an Arte Povera exhibit in the Kröller-Müller Museum during my visit to The Netherlands in February 2013. These works, shown as a diptych, covered an entire sidewall of the gallery, but its physical scale was marked by utmost simplicity, consisting only of tessellations of a beautiful black charcoal pattern on drawing paper. Upon closer inspection, I learned that the patterns were all impressions of the skin on Penone’s own eyelids. Thus in my piece, the types of dialogue occurring within the ensemble are informed by the dichotomies within our own bodies, the left and right sides, the internal and external.

This work was composed while in residence at the Copland House, Cortlandt Manor, New York, as a recipient of the Copland House Residency Award.