On today’s date in 2001, this music helped open a new art museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The building was designed by Santiago Calatrava, and its roof looks a little like the wings of a large, graceful bird in flight—at least that’s the impression that composer Kamran Ince got viewing the new structure on several visits to Milwaukee.

Kamran Ince was born in Montana in 1960 to American and Turkish parents, and lived in Turkey between 1966 and 1980. Not surprisingly, elements of traditional Turkish music crop up in his original works, including the piece he entitled “Flight Box,” which was premiered by the Present Music at the new museum in Milwaukee. Ince notes that he himself flew between America and Europe some seven times while working on the new piece.

“Flight Box” is scored for three saxophones, two trumpets, two trombones, percussion, electric bass guitar, keyboards, violin, and cello. The performers are also asked to sing and speak occasionally, intoning words based on the sounds of the Turkish language.

Ince says he completed “Flight Box” early in 2001, months before the September 11th terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. Its October premiere, coming just one month after those traumatic events, added some sinister overtones to the work’s title, but Ince insists it was based on his own, far happier memories of flying, or, as he put it, “it’s the diary of a flight that SAFELY reaches its destination.”