Anemeos Arcturus was written for the similarly named Arcturus Winds, a constituent ensemble in the Portland-based chamber music collective 45th Parallel Universe. This 8-minute work for wind quintet brings together many disparate influences. The outer sections are a strange variety of chaccone, where turning and cascading lines in the upper winds are undergirded by an other-worldly ground bass, hidden lumbering lines in the bassoon and horn. After an early climax dissipates, the next music we hear blends (mostly accidental) quotations from “Saturn” from Holst’s The Planets, the concluding number of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, and harmonies vaguely reminiscent of Arvo Pärt’s Fratres. A trio of Oboe, Horn, and Bassoon spins out the primary material in this strange mixture, as I do my best to channel what Brahms could do best: give these most lyrical of wind instruments signing lines in the meat of their best registers. As this section winds up, the flute and oboe ratchet up the tension by propelling the ensemble through a metric modulation. The music shifts to a lilting but grand 9/8, and I attempt to squeeze a full-orchestra sound out of the quintet. A rising figure in the bass clarinet, horn, and bassoon forcefully enters the scene, like as I try to condense the opening of Wagner’s Das Rheingold and the closing of Adams’ Harmonielehre into three instruments. The flute and oboe lose their marbles and spin out into a broken world of drunken arpeggios and stuttering repeating tones. Finally our original chaconne material breaks through, albeit in a much more grand and self-confident iteration. Now in a key area of four sharps, and adorned with an english horn solo, the final minutes of the work are haunted by apparitions from the 2nd movement of Ravel’s Concerto in G.