I am at work writing music for a new record (more to follow on that front). But I am specifially working on a Suite inspired by Richard Avedon's series of photos called In the American West. These are dramatic black and white portraits from the early eighties. While sometimes inspiring, sometimes depressing, and always poignant, the images capture a beautiful familiarity of the every day landscape of people in the western US. I am attempting to capture that feeling in music for string quartet (the kind that consists of banjo, violin, guitar and bass).