“In 1989, after nine years of composing and creating electronic music, I decided to return to writing acoustic classical music. My plan would be to write an orchestral work, a string quartet, and a large-scale choral work. I tackled the orchestral work first, and in 1993 I finished Kopavi, a ballet. Next would be the string quartet. To prepare for it, I began a study of the great quartets of Haydn, Beethoven and Debussy. In January of 1996, I was living in Richmond, Virginia where I had a contract to write software for the Department of Motor Vehicles.
     “On the Morning of January 6th, the North American Blizzard of 1996 struck the East Coast. I awoke that morning realizing that I had been dreaming the opening of my string quartet. I grabbed some paper and began writing down what I clearly heard in the dream: the first few pages of the first movement, then allowed the music to spontaneously flow for a few more pages. I managed to get to work that morning. Very few employees had shown up, as most of the roads were not driveable and power was out all over the city. I was sitting at my computer terminal, writing some computer code when I felt a presence around me, and then I begin to hear the middle part of the first movement clearly. I grabbed some computer printouts on my desk, turned them over, and wrote out the entire middle section then and there. This is how this quartet unfolded.”