Imagined Archipelagos began as a series of miniatures inspired by the Mayan civilization. The opening movement, originally titled Tzolkin, is structured around the Mayan ritual calendar of 13 months and 20 days; here, musical phrases of 13 and 20 notes unfold at staggered rates between the violin and piano, creating a complex temporal weave. This was followed by a lyrical movement depicting Ix Chel, the powerful jaguar goddess of the moon and midwifery.

As the work progressed, however, the music began to pull toward a broader, pan-American horizon. The final movement, for instance, emerged as a dazzling Venezuelan dance that obstinately repeats a single chord progression while the two instruments remain provocatively out of alignment.

Finding that the "Mayan" umbrella could no longer contain these diverse influences, I turned to the poetry of Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott. His metaphor of the archipelago provided the perfect framework: each movement constitutes an individual "island," seemingly isolated but joined to the others beneath the surface of the water.

The resulting work is more than the sum of its parts. It inhabits that quintessential American paradox: a space where the music feels simultaneously ancient and modern, simple and complex, familiar and entirely new.