Dream Loop Spells is the debut album of cellist/composer Nick Dinnerstein. Pairing two original works — for cello & piano and cello & loop pedal — with music by Philip Glass and Leoš Janáček, the album unfolds through terrains of pattern, enchantment, and inward transformation.

Dinnerstein’s Sonatina for Cello and Piano reimagines the classical sonata through a contemporary lens — harmonically wide-ranging, dramatic, and driven by a propulsive rhythmic energy.

The opening Vivace compresses sonata form into miniature. In it, the cello takes on the role of mercurial shape shifter, never lingering for long, darting in and out of the piano’s manic, off-kilter grooves.

The Lament features a soaring cello line above an unrelenting bassline, punctuated by sudden, violent eruptions. The second half of the movement, led by the piano, evokes a dark jazz solo that gradually falls into an all-consuming darkness.

The Rondo begins with sweet and nostalgic melodies, before wandering into a strange fantasy that reimagines everything prior, then emerges back into tenderness and light.

Philip Glass’s Etudes are built out of undulating patterns and sweeping melodic gestures, generating a sense of motion at once hypnotic and deeply human — the music opens large emotional spaces through the smallest materials.

Heard here as a sequence of three — Nos. 11, 2, and 6 — these etudes form an arc, from intensity to introspection to exuberance. Repetition draws the listener into a heightened awareness of pulse, color, and breath.

Leoš Janáček’s Pohádka for cello and piano draws its inspiration from The Tale of Tsar Berendey by Russian poet Vasily Zhukovsky. It tells the story of a prince, cursed to live in the underworld, and the daughter of the underworld who rescues him. Despite impossibly difficult trials and powerful enchantments set against them, their love ultimately prevails.

Puppet Music, for cello and live loop pedal, evokes a wordless story, an inner world. Written to accompany a marionette performance, the work’s layered loops and transforming textures create a strange, theatrical atmosphere — eerie, lyrical, and poignant.