An entr’acte, either referring to an intermission or a piece of music played between two acts of a performance, is one of my favorite examples of a liminal space: an inbetween space of transition and malliability. Firs in a Wardrobe was inspired by some of my favorite childhood liminal spaces, like a wardrobe with a magic forest hidden inside, to explore the push and pull between our self and our environment- the ones we escape to and the ones we create for ourselves.

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.