'…wander, darkling' (2000) enlarged what up to then had been my more usual lyrical style of writing with a number of extended playing techniques, which I sought to use both musically and motivically – this was the first piece in which I embraced a wider range of musical influences than usual.
The quartet was written as a result of my experience of having to flee Belgrade – where I had been living – with my family during the NATO bombing in 1999. A number of political and bureaucratic borders had to be traversed in this process before we arrived back in Ireland, and the notion of being swept around the globe by the ‘winds of fate’, across borders of many kinds, was very present in my mind as I wrote the piece.
'…wander, darkling' was commissioned by Leitrim County Council and premiered by the Vogler Quartet.
