Reviewers and performers have heard Debussy, Stravinsky, Bartok, Villa-Lobos, Webern, and Gunther Schuller jumbled together in this virtuoso composition for woodwinds and horn. I was conscious of imitating Stravinsky and Steve Reich in different sections as I wrote the piece. The woodwind colors swirl around like those in an expensive kaleidoscope. As one writer termed it, "the composer...has taken several well-known musical motives and treated them to a wide variety of musical refractions." Prisms has been performed by many different woodwind quintets from Norway to Mississippi.