Inspired by a trip to New York, Staten Crossing I-VIII is essentially a set of eight miniature variations. Whilst in New York, my wife and I took the Staten Island Ferry and as we sailed away from Manhattan, the one thing that really struck me, and a seemingly obvious occurrence, was that these huge dominating buildings became smaller, but also grew in size at the same time. It was this sense of perspective that inspired the piece. I take a small melodic phrase, which for me has an essence of the jazz club, and use this as the basis for each movement. Sometimes the phrase is heard in full, sometimes fragmented. Sometimes each player will play independently from each other in a quasi-indeterminate way, sometimes they’ll play together. I also ask in score for the quartet to be separated around the performance space (i.e. two players at the front and two preferably behind the audience), this is to try and give a sense of physical and audible space to the piece to try and emulate the structures, sights and sounds of New York and how I remember them.