CONTINUANCE
Year of composition: 2019
Instrumentation: flute, clarinet, guitar, harp, percussion, string trio
Duration: 17′
Commissioned by Continuum ensemble, with financial support from Stanley Witkin
Premiere: Continuum ensemble, Brian Current, cond.
The Music Gallery, Toronto
November 3, 2019
PROGRAMME NOTE
I was fortunate in contiNuance to have some latitude in my choice of instrumentation. This compelled me to build, in contrast with my recent chamber works, an ensemble characterized by an overall transparency of sound, with the plucked-string instruments guitar and harp at its core. Another divergence with regard to my catalogue is the work’s piecemeal form, which is a concatenation of seven miniatures roughly symmetrical in design. Most of the movements have a fast character, though the substantial central movement is flanked on both sides by slow movements functioning as quasi-interludes. contiNuance is about an idea that, by virtue of its confrontation with and absorption of other ideas, persists and grows as it passes through time. It was composed in celebration of the 35thanniversary of the Toronto-based Continuum Ensemble.