Hellermann composed the piece in the late 1970s as the last of four works focusing on different instrumental techniques. Knowing how far Dick had expanded the vocabulary for flute, the composer created a nearly-52-minute score that challenged the soloist to perform without pausing to take breaths. The feat is made possible through the art of circular breathing, wherein the player draws air in through the nose while continuing to play in an uninterrupted flow of sounds. In this case, those sounds include multiphonics, generating several notes at once, which are coloured by what the composer terms ‘a continuous diaphragm tremolo’.

All of this might be mere technical trickery were it not for the fact that the music works a spell by subtly shifting to notes around a central E natural and building a series of beguiling phrases. It takes a while for these transformations to occur, but once they begin to take shape, the piece draws you in as if it were a benevolent Pied Piper.

In his elegant and understated way, Dick manages to draw attention not to his circular-breathing virtuosity but to the bewitching narrative Hellermann conjured, for however long he spent in whichever city in whatever month.