3 DESPERTARES (3 Awakenings) was written in 2011 and is dedicated to my dear friend and teacher David Tanenbaum. It is set for guitar sextet and a bass part, which can be played by a double bass pizz. throughout, or by an electric bass. Some months before I wrote the piece, I was doing some teaching with some of my friend’s guitar students. One of the very young ones seemed to be quite stuck, and appeared completely disenchanted with the whole act of playing guitar. In an effort to change the pace I asked him if he had learned any chords so far. He looked at me as if I was talking about quantum physics. I taught him a very simple one and gave him a pattern to play with his right hand. The moment harmonious sounds came out from his own hands his face seemed to awake as if from a deep sleep. Then I told him he could even make up his own chords, and I played a random progression with four different chords. His eyes opened up even more! These four arpeggiated chords make up the ostinato in the second movement, as well as the subsequent material in the other voices. Movements I (dreamy) and III (uneasy) also try to express the some times faint line between sleep and wakefulness. It is as if they are built around the moment when one is not quite sure about having woken up, or in fact slipping into deeper dream.