This piece was originally composed in 1989, with a new version created in 2002, commissioned by cellist Kate Dillingham and premiering in April 2002 at Merkin Concert Hall in New York City.

Augusta Read Thomas is an American composer born in 1964.
She composed prolifically as a child and later studied composition at Northwestern University, Yale and the RAM.She has won numerous awards,commissions and fellowships, including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1989. She became professor of composition at the Eastman School of Music in 1995; in 1997 she was appointed composer-in-residence with the Chicago SO. One of the most sought-after American composers, she has fulfilled commissions from Rostropovich, the St Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the Berlin PO. After leaving her publisher, Theodore Presser Co., in 1997, Thomas withdrew most of her prodigious catalogue, leaving a core of only 23 works.