In the context of the Canadian Composers Portrait Series, Ann Southam's Rivers represents a remarkable manifestation of minimalism in Canadian music. Chistina Petrowska Quilico gives an outstanding performance of these intricate minimalist works that range from contemplative to ebullient.

ANN SOUTHAM

Ann Southam was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, on February 4th 1937, but has spent most of her life in Toronto. After completing musical studies at the Royal Conservatory of Music and the University of Toronto in the mid-1960s where she studied piano with Pierre Souvairan, composition with Dr. Samuel Dolin and electronic music with Gustav Ciamaga, she began a teaching and composing career which has included a long and productive association with modern dance.

Southam has created music for some of Canada’s major modern dance companies and choreographers including the Toronto Dance Theatre, Danny Grossman, Dancemakers, Patricia Beatty, David Earle and Rachel Browne, among others. She has, as well, been an instructor in electroacoustic music at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto and a participant in many composer-in-the-classroom projects.

While a great deal of her work has been electroacoustic music on tape (primarily for dance), in recent years Southam has composed concert music for a variety of acoustic instruments and instrumental ensembles, working with such artists and groups as Eve Egoyan, Beverley Johnston, Arraymusic, New Music Concerts, and The Composers’ Orchestra.

Recent works include Webster’s Spin (1993) for string orchestra, commissioned by the CBC for the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, Qualities of Consonance (1998) for piano solo, commissioned by the CBC for Eve Egoyan, and Figures (2001) for piano and orchestra, also commissioned by the CBC for Eve Egoyan.

Her earlier works include Quintet (1986) for piano and string quartet, commissioned by New Music Concerts through the Ontario Arts Council, Alternate Currents (1987) for solo percussion, commissioned by Beverley Johnston through the Canada Council for the Arts, and Song of the Varied Thrush (1991) for string quartet, commissioned by the Association of Canadian Women Composers through the Ontario Arts Council.

Southam’s recorded works are currently available on such CDs as Alternate Currents (CMCCD 4592), Prouesse (CMCCD 4492), Glass Houses (CBC MVCD 1124) and Seastill (FMDC 4604-2).

Ann Southam is an Associate of the Canadian Music Centre, a member of the Canadian League of Composers and of the Canadian Electroacoustic Community, and a founding member of the Association of Canadian Women Composers. She was a founding member, along with Diana McIntosh, of Music Inter Alia in Winnipeg in 1978. She is presently on the Board of the Canadian Women Composers Foundation, and the Alliance for Canadian New Music Projects which works to promote the study and performance of Canadian music by students across Canada.

THE COMPOSITION

Rivers (1979-81)

While each of the three sets of Rivers employs a different minimalist process, all the pieces consist of repeating patterns of notes and sequences of notes which flow through and around one another, and which are subject to simple processes of change as the music progresses. The continuous ongoing nature of the music is suggestive of rivers, hence the title.

Both pieces in the first set of Rivers use the same basic 12-tone row/melody which is played out over and through a simple ostinato figure. This 12-note melody is presented 12 times beginning each time on a different note, as if telling a story from 12 different points of view. The ostinato is based on intervals of a fourth and fifth, both characteristics of the “row”, and provides a consonant framework for the music.

Considerably slower than the first set, and of a reflective nature, the eight pieces in set two also make use of tone rows. In each case two notes from the row form an ostinato around which the remaining notes are spun out, one additional note at a time until all are present, and then taken away, one note at a time. Again the interval of a fourth and fifth provides the consonant ground over which the music moves.

Set three of Rivers is virtuosic in nature. The music is fast moving and consists of repeating and changing patterns of notes for the right and left hands. These patterns overlap and interact so as to produce small rhythmic and melodic motifs within the texture of the music. Such motifs are not indicated but are left to the performer to “find”. Considerable freedom is given to the performer in terms of tempo, dynamics and pedalling.

I composed Rivers at the piano rather than on paper. After the exotic and “disembodied” world of electroacoustic music in which I’d worked for many years, there was the sheer pleasure of making music by hand – the pleasure of touch.

THE PERFORMER

Christina Petrowska Quilico

Born in Ottawa, Canada, pianist Christina Petrowska Quilico studied with Boris Berlin at the Conservatory of Music, where she made her debut, with orchestra, at age ten. She received a scholarship to study at New York’s Juilliard School as a student of Rosina Lhévinne, Leaneane Dowis and Irwin Freundlich, and at age fourteen made her New York concert debut with full orchestra at New York’s Town Hall as a co-winner with fellow student Murray Perahia of the High School of the Performing Arts Concerto Competition.

After graduation, she studied at the Sorbonne in Paris and later in Darmstadt and Berlin with Karlheinz Stockhausen and György Ligeti. From 1962 to 1980, Petrowska Quilico lived in New York City, where she performed extensively. In 1971, she married her first husband, Quebec composer Michel-Georges Brégent (1948-1993). As a couple, they were extremely active in new music circles in Canada and in Europe throughout the 1970s and early 1980s.

Petrowska Quilico has recorded 16 CDs as a soloist, with orchestra and in chamber ensembles and 2 CDs with her second husband, the late Metropolitan Opera baritone Louis Quilico. In October 1992, her CD Virtuoso Piano Music of Our Time was sent into space with Canadian astronaut Steve Maclean where it debuted aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia.

Among the Canadian composers who have written piano concerti and solo works for Petrowska Quilico are Violet Archer, Glenn Buhr, Omar Daniel, Christos Hatzis, Larysa Kuzmenko, Gary Kulesha, Alexina Louie, Heather Schmidt, Ted Dawson, Steven Gellman and John Weinzweig.

She has performed throughout the United States and Canada, highlighted by appearances at Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully and Town Hall, The Museum of Modern Art and Merkin Concert Hall. She has also toured Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

Some of her available CDs featuring music by Canadian composers include Mystic Streams (WEL 001), Northern Sirens (YFA 00999) and Gems with an Edge (WEL 007). Petrowska Quilico currently makes her home in Toronto, Canada, where she is a Professor of Piano and Musicology at York University.