“One of the things that I’m drawn to is living with someone for a long time, being in love, and what that’s like after you’ve lived together for 10 years,” the composer and percussionist Sarah Hennies said recently. “It becomes, somehow, more banal and routine, but also more intimately bonded at the same time.
So that’s the piece I wanted to write.” Speaking by phone from Ithaca, N.Y., where she lives with her partner, the visual artist Mara Baldwin, and their young son, Ms.
Hennies, 41, was explaining what had led her to compose “The Reinvention of Romance.” The duet for cello and percussion comprises some 90 minutes of spare, economical gestures, played not quite in sync.