On today’s date in 2010, at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music in Nashville, the ALIAS ensemble gave the premiere performance of a new chamber world by the American composer Gabriela Lena Frank. Her new work was entitled “Hilos,” the Spanish word for “threads,” and was an eight-movement quartet for piano, violin, cello and clarinet.

Now, it’s not unusual for composer to be inspired by or to tap into traditions inspired by their particular cultural background, but Gabriela Lena Frank has a pretty wide variety of options in that regard: Her father is an American of Lithuanian Jewish heritage and her mother is Peruvian of Chinese descent. Her parents met when her father was a Peace Corps volunteer in Peru in the 1960s, and Franck herself grew up in Berkeley, California.

"There's usually a story line behind my music; a scenario or character," says Frank. In comments for the premiere performance of “Hilos,” Frank noted, “There are similarities to [Mussorgsky’s] ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ in that each movement tells a different story … Hilos refers to the ‘threads’ that make up Andean textiles and how these threads weave together to portray tantalizing pictures.”

Each of the short movements of “Hilos” has an evocative title, such “Canto del Altiplano” (Song of the Highlands), “Zumballyu” (Spinning Top), or “Juegos de los Niños” (Games of the Children).