"I first experienced the physical power of music when, as a little boy, my parents took me to an outdoor concert at Wolf Trap. The explosion from Beethoven's kettle drums knocked me off my parents' blanket and onto the grass. I covered a lot of ground in that short distance because from that point forward I was aware of music as a force unto itself. I had gone through a passageway and come out a different person." (Joseph M. Levin) American composer Joseph M. Levin was born in 1958. At first he saw the works on this album as being unrelated, but upon reflection decided that the works tell an immigrant's tale. The instrumentation includes piano, flute, clarinet, bassoon, French Horn, violin, and cello.