A note from the composer:

"A Letter from the After-life is the first of a two-part work entitled Two Pop Songs on Antique Poems. Originally for string quartet, the work won the 2016 JUNO for Best Classical Composition. The music – commissioned by the Afiara String Quartet – was a response to the concept of 'Pop-influenced music for a Classical string quartet'; perhaps some sort of tussle between tradition and innovation. I sought to create my own kind of 'collision of old and new', where the beauty and meaning of vintage poems might inspire the kind of loops, grooves, and catchy tunes heard in Pop. The melodies are, in fact, settings of poem texts with the words stripped away. Contained in ' Letter from the After-life are two quotes from Schubert's Death & the Maiden quartet. Ironically, they struck me as being Pop-like, and so I allowed them to emerge as though improvised; then to be improvised upon."

The inspiration of A Letter from the After-life:
 
I sent my Soul through the Invisible, 
Some letter of that After-life to spell: 
And by and by my Soul return'd to me, 
And answer'd "I Myself am Heav'n and Hell"

- from the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (1048–1131), trans. Edward Fitzgerald (1809–1883)