Chrysalis (for soprano, violin, and cello) (2006)

Violinist Yuan-Qing Yu and cellist Kenneth Olsen traced gauzy lines around [Nicholas] Phan's plaintive, austere vocalism in Chrysalis, in which the speaker — in a dream — encounters an unwritten poem in the form of a woman. The results were mesmerizing.

Sarah Kirkland Snider's ruminative Chrysalis (2006), for instance, might be a composition of recent vintage, yet it sits comfortably amongst ones by Bach and Mozart.