1. Grey Trees
2. Blam!
3. Legend

The title Uncertain Landscape refers especially to evocative early landscape photography in which sepia tones create beautiful, yet haunting, images of the landscape. The solemn, introspective atmosphere of "Grey Trees" takes its inspiration from the work of 19th-century photographer Eugène Cuvelier. This movement features melodies that never quite take shape, ostinato patterns that quietly, unstably undulate, and a tonal language that hovers between diatonic and octatonic. The middle movement "Blam!" is a fast-forward to pop artist Roy Lichtenstein, whose piece Blam depicts, in explosive color, a pilot ejecting from his exploding plane. After an initial explosion, swirling themes twist and turn about, interrupted by another, more dramatic, explosion. After a few more turns, the piece comes to an uncertain end. "Legend" returns to the quietude of the first movement, this time as a somewhat halting waltz with fully-formed melodies, in a style perhaps reminiscent of Mussorgsky or early Prokofiev.

—Neil Thornock