[ originally published in @tlas magazine ]

These pieces were originally written between 1986 and 1989 for the Composers' Cafeteria, a musical collective in Berkeley, California. They were scored for orchestral instruments and performed to modest audiences around the Bay Area.

Not a composer by training, I wrote these pieces by ear, and with primitive tools. A Mac Plus was my music pad, its internal speaker my orchestra. The arrangements, as you might guess, weren't always well suited to actual musicians.

The advent of MIDI and QuickTime seemed to open the door for revival. After all, QuickTime barely improves on the crude oscillations of System 3; the instruments aren't appreciably more human. Yet I had to make compromises, and these renditions aren't the originals -- those died along with Pro Composer. They're just a new performance.