Kites is scored for wind quintet and string quintet and came about through Holt's interest in Japanese things. The kite that features is preceded by an introduction of fragile, slow and serene scene-settingmusic.

Like Kites, Holt's musical ideas are objects defined by the forces within them; intervals, dynamic intensities and tensions between different instruments and registers. Many of these featurethroughout the piecewhich has a graceful ending likened to a Light breeze blowing shoreward form the ocean.