In the spring of 2003, I was finishing up my undergrad thesis at the University of Southern Mississippi. I’d been studying Elliott Carter’s Quintet for Piano and Winds for months, and trying to make heads and tails of his newly published Harmony Book. When I learned about the premiere of Carter’s Boston Concerto, my wife and I decided we were making a trip. We scraped up the money (some of it might have been funded by a payday loans Australia company) and flew to Boston. I thought (foolishly looking back now) that this 94 year old composer could not have