« So Speeds the Instant » is quoted from James Joyce’s « Finnegans Wake » to symbolize the swift passage of the 60 years between the recording of Miles Davis’s most famous recording, « Kind of Blue », and the composition of this piece. Commissioned by Dean McNeill for the Saskatoon Jazz Orchestra, it is one of several pieces composed for the occasion. It’s main motif inverts Miles’s famous opening riff in his solo on « So What », and the harmonic language references that tune.