The idea for deep sea, distant sky (String Quartet No. 1) came from my fascination with music’s ability to be perceived as a tangible, physical form – a mountain, a river, a winding road – and its camera-like capacity to capture the feeling or essence of a place. As a child, I loved to watch the ocean birds from high atop Kauaʻiʻs Kīlauea Point, and deep sea, distant sky is essentially a portrait of that place and time. Each of the five movements takes on a different perspective of that place: the birds flying high above the ocean, the marching ocean swells, the mysterious ocean bottom with shifting undersea currents (and surprises), and lively swimming marine life. The movements also form a kind of larger palindrome in that the first (“Exuberant”) and last (“Fleet–Finale”) movements share thematic material and possess a similar extroverted character; the second (“Desolate”) and fourth (“(not so) Desolate”) movements are each cut from the same cloth, providing a brief respite from the outer, more virtuosic movements; and the middle movement (“Rigorous”) stands on its own. deep sea, distant sky (String Quartet No. 1) is dedicated to the members of the Galliard String Quartet: Claire Hazzard, Hung Wu, Colin Belisle, and I-Bei Lin.