In the Form of a Shell derives most of its musical material from Canto y danza de los innuìmeros abuelos for solo clarinet, by  Alejandro Cardona, to whom this piece expresses my admiration and gratitude. The piece contrasts and superimposes two different ways of exploring multiplicity of musical streams: one very hectic and contained, in the soloist part featuring a variety of timbres and register extremes by way of non-conventional techniques (tongue-ram, tongue-clicks, multiphonics, harmonics); and the other dilated and spatial, embodied by the orchestra which is spatialized, mimicking the shape and golden mean proportions of a nautilus shell, so that departing from the soloist, moving to the right and ending to the left, instruments are grouped in incremental numbers ending with a string ensemble on the larger part.

Interpreters: Dalia Chin as soloist, Walter Morales as conductor of the Orquesta Sinfónica de Heredia. 

Recent works by Pablo Chin (b. 1982) draw inspiration from the narratives of film and literature, phonetic structures in text, and the use of idiosyncratic transcription methods that enable imaginative exploration of pre-existent musical sources. His music has been performed in South, Central and North America, in Israel, Asia and in Europe. He has been commissioned to compose works for Ensemble Recherche, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), members of the Anubis Quartet, the MAVerick Ensemble, the Latino Music Festival of Chicago and Ensemble Dal Niente, among others. His music has also been performed by artists including Ostravská Banda, Donatienne Michel-Dansaq, Pierre-Stéphane Meugé, Marino Formenti, Claire Chase, Eric Lamb, Gan Lev and Marcuss Weiss. He has been awarded the Cacavas Award, William T. Faricy Award, and William Karlins Award, all prizes from Northwestern University, where he earned a doctoral degree in composition. There he has studied with Hans Thomalla, Jay Alan Yim, and Aaron Cassidy. Previous instructors include Alejandro Cardona in his native Costa Rica, and Orlando García in Miami. In master classes he has worked with Richard Barrett, Oliver Knussen, Chaya Czernowin, and Kaija Saariaho among others.