When I got back from Paris there was a nonet to write for the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, for a retrospective of my work they would give in January 1981. April at the MacDowell Colony, and the air was so palpably thick and sweet and languorous it just infused me. And my formative teacher, Bülent Arel, kept seeming to be standing behind me as I wrote in that isolated cabin in the woods. He’d say, “You can’t do that,” and I’d say, “Shush!” and write it anyway.

Three years later I played him the piece in front of his current students. He said, “You can’t do that” about all the places I’d heard him in my mind’s ear. I didn’t say anything. There was a tense moment, then he said, “OK, let’s all go eat Chinese.” I could have kissed him right then.

It was a great lunch. He and I knew I was no longer his student, and it was alright, and we were still close.

Listen for the sound of a rubber-band balsa-wood model airplane in the quietest moment in the center of the piece. The San Francisco Players got the piece exactly right.

– Conrad Cummings