This short duo for bass clarinet and cello is built around two sections that nod to earlier process works by pioneering minimalists such as Steve Reich and Philip Glass. Following a short, forlorn introduction, the cello breaks into a groovy mixed-meter lick. The cellist repeats this passage with minor hiccups and jabs thrown in, while the bass clarinet traces a C minor scale, beginning slowly and compressing the rhythmic values by one eighth note with each repetition. Eventually, the bass clarinet’s scales become tightly wound enough to superimpose over the cello’s eight-note licks.

After a brief period of synchronization, the cello returns to material from the work’s opening while the bass clarinet rumbles below. This “hyper-lament” tumbles into the next process section, this time with the roles roughly reversed. The bass clarinet takes up a new mixed-meter lick — a lopsided groove built on a more elaborate four-bar pattern (11/8 – 11/8 – 11/8 – 10/8). Here, the process is based on a different kind of convergence: the bass clarinet gradually loses eighth notes from the pattern, those notes absorbed by their neighbors to create longer and longer rhythmic values. Meanwhile, the cellist intones an eight-bar cycle of sixths at an unyielding piano dolce.

Finally, the two voices merge in dynamics and tempo, and the work concludes with somber music — an almost ritualistic settling into C-sharp minor.