Veiled Gardens is a meditation on the unseen. Often, while strolling around the neighborhood, I find myself thinking about the little things that lay hidden inside the ordinary: the patterned activity of birds and other wildlife, the unfamiliar creeks nestled between familiar houses, strange angles that transform well-known sights into new places altogether. But also that which can’t be seen at all – what a place may have looked like before it was developed — before it was inhabited at all! —  the stories of the people living in the homes I walk by every day, the fizzing of the quantum foam. All these things coexist in the same overlapping reality. This piece, a slow double variation, presents two themes, the second of which is only gradually revealed as the piece progresses. Each variation explores a different sound world through the themes, drawing back the veil on textures “hidden” within a familiar motif. Near the end, the second theme is finally played in its entirety, before being swept up in a flurry of energetic bariolage, as the daydream scatters and returns to the bright world.