Opera in 2 acts, on a libretto by Susan Yankowitz, after the 1921 novel by Colette. The Actors Studio workshop production, May 6-9, 2005. The story reflects a love affair cast as a bittersweet meditation on that moment when all persons "of a certain age" realize they have crossed the invisible meridian that separates their youth from what is left of their lives.

From Chéri:" I am Lea de Lonval"

Entrance and Exit are framing devices for a chamber concert.

Entrance is about layers of memory and connections to the past: a story gradually unfolds about an audience member whose mind wanders away from the music and drifts back to another time and place.  Her memories of that other world are influenced by the music she is hearing, and, in turn, the music responds to the journey of her imagination.

Each piece is scored for actor and five instruments, although the instrumentation differs.

excerpt from "Entrance" with Cinny Strickland, narrator

Commissioned by Yo-Yo Ma;

Spirit Songs II. excerpt Mallarme Chamber Players

Excerpt from composer's note:  Emergence is based upon the fascinating thing that happens when a group of independent tones are played together and tuned so that they are in a harmonic relationship. Another note, the fundamental, appears, and now we hear only that second note, while all the others are heard as the timbre of the sound.

Excerpt - Emergence

Angular, taut, centrifugal, highly dramatic. The composer sculpts every syllable of the romantic recluse's spare verse, and surrounds the straining singer with virtuoso woodwind rustling reminiscent of the "harmony of nature" that is the subject of the final poem. TH elack of a piano or other harmony instrument in this work, makes the texture unforgiving of miscalculation. Blank saves the flute-clarinet duet for the two outer songs, restricting the accompaniment of the central two to flute and then to clarinet alone. His use of tritones as structural points is familiar, but his use of unisons, octaves and other intervals considered consonant, highlights the complex textural interplay of the three lines.

Excerpt, Four Poems of Emily Dickinson by Allan Blank

Computer generated tape piece

Gressel String Theories - excerpt

Second in the Invisible Cities String Quartet Cycle.

"Stars" excerpt, Daedalus Quartet