Having just spent three days at the Chamber Music America conference I was struck by how little cliche thinking was in evidence. It seems more respect is being given to the off-beat, the mixed genre, the inventive and exploratory in music. How refreshing.

This sense of the new is not at all in conflict with the work of a gifted string quartet. Though they are a "standard" combination dealing with "standard" repertoire, their take on it is altogether personal and impersonal all at once. It represents a high standard of refusal to repeat the already known, to rehash the pre-digested.

There was a lot of talk about the sounds in the cracks between the twelve discrete tones we are still, unfortunately, teaching young children to accept as the basic canon. This is the area of my own specialization. This is what Tonal Refraction addresses.