Mirages (2018) by Carla Magnan
for cello and piano
US premiere; 2020 Earplay Donald Aird Composers Competition winner

Mirages is a set of four pieces for cello and piano. The pieces, Mirage I, II, III and IV, composed in 2018, are inspired by the optical phenomenon of the same name, a visual perception of distorted images of distant objects, which seem suspended in the air or turned upside down like reflections from a mirror, while what the images appear to represent is determined by the interpretive faculties of the human mind.