Broken Lynes was composed from July to December of 1995 and reworked in March of 1997. A large part of the first draft was completed during a three week stay at the MacDowell Artist Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire in July and August of 1995 and is scored for alto flute (doubling on flute), clarinet (doubling on bass clarinet), violin, cello, and piano. Broken Lynes is a kind of musical treatise on all the duets, trios, and quartets, that are possible with its five instruments. The work's title comes from the fact that the instrumental parts, or lines (the spelling "lynes" is a pun on a technical term meaning "an unrealized succession of pitch-classes"), are broken by different ensembles, creating an everchanging texture where each instrument is absent for long periods of time. This work is dedicated to the memory of a "runaway horse" after a good friend who, full of extraordinary potential, died suddenly at the age of twenty-seven.