Entr'acte

for string quartet, 2011
(also adapted for string orchestra, 2014)
11'

First performed by the Brentano Quartet at Princeton University, April 2011
String orchestra version commissioned by A Far Cry, July 2014

Entr’acte was written in 2011 after hearing the Brentano Quartet play Haydn’s Op. 77 No. 2 — with their spare and soulful shift to the D-flat major trio in the minuet. It is structured like a minuet and trio, riffing on that classical form but taking it a little further. I love the way some music (like the minuets of Op. 77) suddenly takes you to the other side of Alice’s looking glass, in a kind of absurd, subtle, technicolor transition.