There is a fluid and unpredictable counterpoint to the music, reflecting the rushing cascades, luxuriant eddies, and meditative stillness in the music, which alternates between large kinetic strokes and delicately, detailed duets.
The counterpoint allows no breaks for the fingers. 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 pedaling. The three sets of Rivers employ 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.
CHRISTINA PETROWSKA QUILICO, C.M., FRSC, Professor Emerita, Senior Scholar, was appointed to the Order of Canada “for her celebrated career as a classical and contemporary pianist, and for championing Canadian music”. She was inducted into the Royal Society of Canada “the country’s highest honour an individual can achieve in the Arts, Social Sciences” and she has received the Friends of Canadian Music Award from the Canadian Music Centre and Canadian League of Composers, and selected as one of the CMC’s Ambassadors of Canadian music She was recently awarded 2 York University Research Awards and a major Canada Council Grant and Ontario Arts Council Grant. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation named her one of “20 Can’t-Miss Classical Pianists” one of “Canada’s 25 best classical pianists” and inducted her into CBC’s “In Concert Hall of Fame”. Four of her 50 plus CDs have earned JUNO Award nominations including Glass Houses Revisited by Ann Southam and 3 CDs featuring concertos with the Toronto Symphony,Jukka_Pekka Saraste, conductor, Winnipeg Symphony,Bramwell Tovey conductor, National Arts Centre, Alex Pauk conductor,Vancouver CBC Symphony Orchestra, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, conductor and Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestras, Daneil Warren conductor... Solo concerts and performances of 53 concertos with orchestra have taken her across the U.S. and Canada, as well as to Taiwan, the Middle East, France, England, Germany, Greece, and Eastern Europe. Her recent CDs have landed on numerous 2021 best-of- lists in Canada and abroad. “Vintage Americana” was one of the winners in the classical category of the Global Music Awards listed on CBC’s Canada’s top 21 Classical albums of 2021, Ludwig van Toronto’s 2021’s Lesser Known Gems, (one of eight CDs), The Piano Street Team (one of five Recommended New Piano Albums) and “What a Performance” award as one of the most outstanding recordings of the year from Art Music Lounge in the US.. Her CDs also include classical works by Chopin, Liszt, Mozart, Tangos, Mozart piano concertos and the complete Mozart violin and piano sonatas, recorded. She is a graduate of the Juilliard School of Music in New York and performed in Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln, Centre, Carnegie Hall, Merkin Halls.
Composer Ann Southam was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1937 but lived most of her life in Toronto. After completing musical studies at the University of Toronto and the Royal Conservatory of Music in the early 1960’s she began a teaching and composing career that included a long and productive association with modern dance. She created music for some of Canada’s major modern dance companies and choreographers, including the Toronto Dance Theatre, Danny Grossman, Dancemakers, Rachel Browne and Terrill Maguire. Simultaneously, she was an instructor in electronic music at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto and participated in many “composer-in-the-classroom” programs in elementary and high schools.
While a great deal of her work was electroacoustic music on tape, in her later years she became increasingly interested in composing music for acoustic instruments. The piano being her favourite, she worked closely with Christina Petrowska Quilico for 30 years , who has recorded Southam’s piano music on the 3 CD set Rivers (Canadian Composer Portraits), 2 CD set Pond Life, 2 CD set Glass Houses and Soundspinning and individual pieces on Northern Sirens, Mystic Streams, and other compilation discs. Quilico’s recording of Glass House no. 5 earned her a Juno nomination for Best Classical Composition in 2012. She was a member of the Canadian Music Centre and the Canadian League of Composers, and a founding member of the Association of Canadian Women Composers. She was honoured with the Order of Canada, and with the 2001 Friends of Canadian Music Award.
www.christinapetrowskaquilico.com
