Cracked (2021) is a string quartet about eggs, one of my favorite foods, in terms of both the ways we cook them and the potential life force that it contains. The first four movements—soft-boil, fry, steam, and scramble—are vignettes of my favorite ways of preparing eggs, and I focused on bringing the respective cooking methods, textures, and tastes of the movements' namesakes to life. The last movement, hatch, aims to capture the wondrous process in which a chick grows inside an egg, and reflects on the respect we should have for all the food that we, so often, take for granted. Cracked was written for The Rhythm Method as part of the Lake George Music Festival Composers Institute.
