Composition: 2012, revision 2013
Instrumentation: piano
Premiere: Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa - February 5th, 2013 - Vancouver

A typical portrayal of an alchemist is that of a half-scientist, half-hermetic, naïvely attempting to transmute a common metal into a noble one. But for an alchemist, this transmutation was but a metaphor for spiritual evolution, a personal quest to achieve perfection, immortality, and redemption. Transmutation, then, is subtly different from transformation -- to not merely change, but to create something higher, something more perfect. In this work, I explore the metaphor of transmutation, using something familiar to all of us: the sense of time passing. Through reiteration, this work’s sonic material is constantly returning -- as a different timbre, with reverberation, echoing, as a distant memory -- striving for transmutation. But the ultimate point of return in this work is also its point of departure, a metaphor for the cycle of life and death that the alchemist sought to escape, the ancient symbol Ouroboros, the serpent eating its own tail.

Support for Ouroboros was provided by the Canada Council for the Arts.

Ouroboros

Ambitus has a specific meaning for a musician — the distance between the highest and lowest notes in a composition. This Latin term for going round was originally an accusation of exerting soft power in Ancient Rome, and is the root of the English word ambition.
This dual meaning is at the heart of Ambitus. It was written in the spirit of Luciano Berio’s virtuosic Sequenza series, an ambitious endeavour for a composer. From a musical perspective, the work is an exploration of range and register, and also timbre and virtuosity.
Ambitus was composed by Toronto-based Gregory Lee Newsome, commissioned by Daniel Cooper for Mark Takeshi McGregor.

Gregory Lee Newsome: Ambitus for alto flute and Max/MSP

Portraits is based on multiple themes that hold significance in my mind for people that are significant to me. Each theme is woven together with an original theme of my own. The first theme comes from Telemann’s Fantasia in e minor, one of my mom’s favourite pieces to play and listen to on her instrument, the flute. The second theme is based on When You Dream, a song my dad wrote about watching me sleep when I was a baby. The third theme comes from music my brother Ben wrote for a film he and his friends made. The fourth theme is from the opening song to the Jones & Schmidt musical, Celebration. Celebration is a fairly obscure Broadway musical, and has somehow become my brother Jonah’s favourite musical. After the section for Jonah, there is a brief quote from William Finn’s opening song to Falsettos, “Four Jews in a Room Bitching”. I feel that this quote perfectly sums up my relationship with my family. Following the section inspired by my family, we move onto certain friends of mine, Dylann Miller, Gregory Lee Newsome, and Evan Sokolowski. The section for Dylann starts with a distorted quote from Dave Malloy’s musical “Natasha, Pierre, & the Great Comet of 1812” before moving on to quote Dylann’s “Moonset”. The next section is drawn from Greg’s piece “Lux Aurumque”. The final section is drawn from a song song that I wrote for Evan as a present. Evan’s theme is also where I draw the motivic material that occurs throughout the piece.

Premiered at the Kitchener-Waterloo Chamber Music Society
February 1, 2018

Jillian Carney - Flute
Mark Pinder - Oboe
Shirley Constable - Clarinet
Emerson Berglund - Horn
Micheal Quigley - Bassoon

Portraits

Associate Professor of Music Technology & Digital Media at the University of Toronto.

Ouroboros

Gregory Lee Newsome

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