don’t know what alright even means was written in memory of Matt Herrick, a close friend who passed away in January 2009. Its point of departure is one of our shared passions: the recent output of Bob Dylan (the title is borrowed from 1997’s Time Out of Mind). I found myself as influenced by the lyrics of those recent records (streams of disjointed and aimless couplets) as by their sonorities, particularly the lush production style of Daniel Lanois. In a larger sense, this piece is one in a series of compositions which attempt to translate to a concert setting certain less evident parameters of popular music—texture, timing, and idiomatic gestures, for instance, rather than rhythm, melody, or diatonic harmony. The piece was written for the Bowdoin International Music Festival and premiered July 1, 2009 in Brunswick, Maine.