Ristvedt Phrases is an ekphrastic piece for orchestra mirroring the beautiful colour block paintings of artist Milly Ristvedt. (Represented by Oeno Gallery) As a composer, I’ve long been interested in the inherent colour aspect of musical sound: timbre, sonority, register, and a near synesthesia of pitch to colour. The orchestra is the perfect musical medium to explore this connection between music and painting. And colour, in both music and painting, can dramatically reflect the lived experience of each listener/viewer, regardless of an inherent abstract nature. At the depths of our imagination, mystery has the greatest potential to reveal itself in the connection between the visual and the aural.