Program note by Mark Carlson: FIVE WHIMSIES began as a work for my younger sister, Lisa, then a flutist in high school, and Awakening was written as a 15th birthday present for her in 1976. As the rest of the pieces progressed, I began to think of them more as performance pieces for me. In fact, I premiered Sally�s Wedding as the bride�s processional at my cousin Sally Boni�s wedding in 1977. For many years entitled FIVE LITTLE PIECES�a sort of grad-student joke, since when used in German (F�nf Kleine St�cke) for the title of a Webern work, it sounds profound to us Americans�I retitled it when I realized that flutists took its name to mean that the pieces are easy. But in the same way that Schumann�s Kinderszenen conveys the naivete and playfulness of childhood without actually being easy to play, these pieces are intended for a flutist with chops.