All of the works on this album were written for the violinists who play them here. Composer David Loeb has worked with traditional Asian music as a composer, scholar, and performer for over fifty years. David Loeb was born in 1939 in New York into a family which took music and painting very seriously. He studied composition with Peter Pindar Stearns at the Mannes College of Music in New York, and then completed a master's degree at Yale. 1964 became a critical year for his future. He began teaching at Mannes and has remained on the faculty there ever since, simultaneously teaching at the Curtis Institute from 1973 until 2000. Receiving a commission to compose a piece for an early music ensemble resulted a continuing involvement with writing for historical instruments, especially viols. Later that same year he began studying traditional Japanese music with Shinichi Yuize.