In my long orchestral career, the times that I find myself playing chamber music with string instruments, especially by living composers, are the times that I feel most like myself. The works gathered here quite literally span my entire career. I have worked closely, over many years, with each composer involved in this project and I am grateful to them all. I am grateful as well to my instrumental colleagues. The process of performing and recording these works with such truly distinguished

string players has been a sustaining privilege. Many different compositional styles are at play here, yet the works all have an important unifying element to me, that of feeling entirely native to the instrument. I am honored to have helped bring these chamber pieces for English horn and strings into the world, to have been a part of each composers' gravitational pull. - Robert Walters