Sand is a Fields composition for 20 instrumentalists, three singers, and conductor. It combines three areas in which he has often worked: modularity, manipulation of text, and integration of composition and improvisation.

Like Fields’ previous modular works, Sand is constructed of units whose interrelationships vary from weak to strong. In performance a conductor spontaneously selects, combines, sequences, and layers modules. Sand also includes improvisational elements within structures and “organic cues,” in which characteristics of a musician’s natural performance, such as the duration of a single slow stroke of a bow or a single breath determines the timing of cues to other instrumentalists.

Sand, as with Fields’ most recent modular works, is constructed of a small number of melodies, phasing patterns, long tones, and organic cue sets that are fragmented according to a simple mathematical formula. The lyrics for the singers consist of short stories that Fields has written. Like the instrumental parts, the lyrics are fragmented into modules.