Written at the request of my long-time collaborator, the brilliant cellist, Laura Metcalf Of Observation and Experience III was premiered in Santa Fe and Albuquerque by Chatter (NM) in September 2025. Scored for a relatively unusual ensemble of solo cello and pairs of oboes, clarinets, horns, and bassoons, this work is a logical pairing to fill out programs featuring any of the great wind octets by Mozart and Beethoven, or other works for small wind band. The first of the series to feature a string instrument, Of Observation and Experience III continues the thread of moody music explored in the second work of the Observation and Experience set. An opening lyrical incantation from the cello anchors the work, serving both as bookends for the work and the climactic statement of the composition’s dramatic arc. Aleatoric techniques are utilized in the winds to create churning masses of sound to accompany the cellist’s halting, hyper-romantic broken lines. A passage focusing on the natural overtone series employs sweeping horn gestures and clarinet multiphonics to urge the music towards a false-summit. Following this preliminary peak, the music falls into a moment of repose, recalling the brilliant harmonies found at the conclusion of Stravinsky’s Symphonies of Wind Instruments. The solo cello leads us back to our home key of D-flat lydian, when the work’s true climax unfolds with a grand statement from the horns and bassoons. This confident music turns ominous when the wind instruments begin bleating and braying like rabid sheep from a horror film. After a round of taunting gestures from the oboes and clarinets, the music gradually unwinds with the returning of aleatoric music. This time, the upper winds sound more like a grandfather clock losing steam than a woven mass of organic matter. Finally, the cellist takes up our “theme” in the upper registers and this gentle statement brings us to the conclusion of the work.