I want to breathe with the clouds (2026)

String Quartet

Co-commissioned by Schneider Concerts at The New School for the Balourdet Quartet; Coretet; Balourdet Quartet; The Friends of Chamber Music Kansas City; Distinguished Artist Concert and Lecture Series; Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle

Dedicated to the Balourdet Quartet

Duration: 12 minutes

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To come

Program Note

Looking out from an airplane window, I was captivated by the sea of clouds stretching out beside me. I imagined what it might be like to leave the plane and simply exist among them. I was drawn to that impossibility. In my studio at home, there is an artwork on the wall that depicts another impossibility: a real seashell fastened to a white surface, transformed into a hot air balloon by two penciled lines that suspend a tiny person in the air. I have come to see it as a symbol of the creative process: a small idea that carries us somewhere we did not expect. 

In my piece, a sense of floating was a starting point, and I followed a path from there, further and further towards an imagined place. A plaintive, gradually unfurling melody passes from player to player, each taking it up in turn. It returns in cycles and later in canon, joined by a second, luminously dancing theme. Throughout, the music exists at once together and apart, undulating on different temporal planes. By the end, the music finds its way to a procession, floating over its steadying heartbeat.

I want to breathe with the clouds was commissioned by the Schneider Concerts at The New School; Coretet; Balourdet Quartet; The Friends of Chamber Music Kansas City; Distinguished Artist Concert and Lecture Series; Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle. It is dedicated to the Balourdet Quartet. 

- Eric Nathan