Breathing Lessons for saxophone quartet is a seven movement, twenty-minute composition written during the spring of 2002. It was created for the Amherst Saxophone Quartet through funds provided by Chamber Music America's Commissioning Program, supported by The National Endowment for the Arts, The Helen F. Whitaker Fund, and The Chamber Music America Commissioning Endowment Fund. The inspiration for Breathing Lessons came from a book of the same name by Anne Tyler. Written in 1988 and published ...

• I. Scene 1: Maggie and Ira Doran, A Trip to Deer Lick
• II. Interlude 1: "Settle for Being Ordinary?"
• III. Scene 2: Daniel Otis Meets the Dorans
• IV. Interlude 2: "Lives alone...drying out like a raisin."
• V. Scene 3: Jesse and Fiona: Reunion
• VI. Interlude 3: "Four vacant rockers"
• VII. Scene 4: Maggie