An American Kaleidoscope

Each person looking through a kaleidoscope sees different images, but the vibrant colours and crystalline angles define the experience. Chou Wen-chung conjures the shades of the sunset on New York's Hudson River Valley with Twilight Colors. Pulitzer Prize-winner Joseph Schwantner uses shared monody to brilliant effect in his angular Elixir. Witnessing the music take off in directions of it own volition, John Huggler subtitled his Capriccio sregolato, 'a capriccio with a mind of its own'. In The Cinnamon Peeler, Californian Donald Crockett sets a bold and sensuous love poem by Sri Lankan-Canadian poet Michael Ondaatje. The use of ‘chance operations' in John Cage's humorous Credo in US ensures that each performance is different from the last.