Eve Egoyan | |
|---|---|
 Eve Egoyan in her studio | |
| Born | Victoria, British Columbia, Canada |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Alma mater | |
| Occupation(s) | Pianist, artist |
| Spouse | David Rokeby |
| Children | 1 |
| Parents |
|
| Relatives | Atom Egoyan (brother) |
| Website | eveegoyan |
Eve Egoyan (born 1964) is an Armenian-Canadian pianist and artist based in Toronto.
Egoyan was born in Victoria, British Columbia. [1] Her Armenian parents, Shushan and Joseph, both painters, ran an art gallery/furniture store in Cairo, Egypt, before emigrating to Canada in 1962. [1] Shushan and Joseph settled in Victoria, where they took over a home furnishings/design store. [1]
Egoyan's parents didn't own a piano, but as a young girl she began to see the piano as a “safe, private place”. [1] Egoyan took lessons from an elderly neighbour, and then began formal lessons at 11 at the Victoria Conservatory of Music. She holds a bachelor of music (BMus) from the University of Victoria (1985). [2] She studied piano in Banff with György Sebők, in Berlin with Georg Sava, in London with Hamish Milne, and at the University of Toronto with Patricia Parr, where she completed a master's degree in 1992. [1]
Egoyan specializes in new works for the piano. Canadian composer Ann Southam dedicated several works to Egoyan throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s including: Qualities of Consonance (1998), Figures: Music for Piano and String Orchestra (2001), In Retrospect (2004), and Simple Lines of Enquiry (2008). [3]
Her 12 solo CDs explore music by composers ranging from Erik Satie to Alvin Curran, Michael Finnissy, James Tenney, Martin Arnold, Linda Catlin Smith, and Southam. Her most recent album, De Puro Amor & En Amor Duro, features two large-scale works by Spanish-German composer Maria de Alvear. [4]
In Surface Tension, a piece created in collaboration with media artist David Rokeby, Egoyan's performance is translated by Rokeby's software into images projected on a screen above the piano. Changes in dynamics, pitch, tone and duration trigger visuals based on natural processes like the motion of planets, the swarming of insects, and water ripples created by a falling pebble. [5]
In 2018, Egoyan created Solo for Duet, an integrated mix of sound, image, and unspoken narrative challenging traditional conceptions of piano and pianist. [6] The following year she collaborated with director Su Rynard on a 72-minute portrait film, Duet for Solo Piano, that documents this musical exploration. [7]
Egoyan's current focus is composing and performing her own work for augmented piano – an acoustic piano equipped with computer software to extend, expand, and enhance the sound. [6]
Egoyan has been the recipient of several accolades including "Best Classical" by The Globe and Mail (1999) for her first solo CD; one of "Ten Top" classical discs, by The New Yorker magazine (2009); [8] and "Top Classical Disc of the Year", by The Globe and Mail (2011). [9] In 2013, she received a Chalmers Arts Fellowship. [10] In 2019, the CBC named her one of the “best 25 Canadian classical pianists of all time”. [11] She won the Muriel Sherrin Award from the Toronto Arts Foundation in 2019. [12]
She has performed in Canada, the US, Europe, and Japan, including festivals in Italy (Transart), Austria (Klangspuren), the UK (Huddersfield Festival), and Vancouver (Modulus Festival). [4] She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (FRSC) and has been designated a CMC Ambassador by the Canadian Music Centre. [13] Egoyan is an elected Associate of the Royal Academy of Music, London, England (ARAM).
Egoyan is married to David Rokeby, a media artist. Her older brother, Atom Egoyan, is a Canadian filmmaker.
Selected solo recordings: [14]
Violet Louise Archer was a Canadian composer, teacher, pianist, organist, and percussionist. Born Violet Balestreri in Montreal, Quebec, in 1913, her family changed their name to Archer in 1940. She died in Ottawa on 21 February 2000.
Clarence Lucas, was a Canadian composer, lyricist, conductor, and music professor.
Allison Cameron is a Canadian composer of contemporary classical music. She composes works for conventional classical instruments, early music instruments, and modern electric instruments such as the electric guitar. She is also a performer of free improvisation and experimental music.
The Canadian Music Centre was founded in 1959 by a group of Canadian composers who saw a need to create a repository for Canadian music. It now holds Canada's largest collection of Canadian concert music, and works to promote the music of its Associate Composers in Canada and around the world.
Ann Southam, was a Canadian electronic and classical music composer and music teacher. She is known for her minimalist, iterative, and lyrical style, for her long-term collaborations with dance choreographers and performers, for her large body of work, and, according to the Globe and Mail, for "blazing a trail for women composers in a notoriously sexist field".
Derek Charke is a Canadian classical composer and flutist.
Barbara Pentland C.M. was one of the pre-eminent members of the generation of Canadian composers who came to artistic maturity in the years following World War Two.
Christina Petrowska Quilico is a Canadian pianist. She is a professor emerita, senior scholar at York University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She was appointed to the Order of Canada in 2020 "For her celebrated career as a classical and contemporary pianist and for championing Canadian music." In 2021, she was named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. In 2022, she was appointed to the Order of Ontario for having "opened the ears of music lovers internationally through numerous classical and contemporary performances.... As a Professor of Musicology and Piano at York University, she has received esteemed research awards. As a benefactor, she established The Christina and Louis Quilico Award at the Ontario Arts Foundation and the Canadian Opera Company." She was presented with the Ontario Arts Council's Oskar Morawetz Award for Excellence in Music Performance, "recognizing talent and commitment to Canadian music", in October 2023.
Tālivaldis Ķeniņš was a Canadian composer. He was forced to emigrate from Latvia when it fell under Soviet occupation after World War II, moving to Canada around 1951. He is credited by Canadian musicologist Paul Rapoport with having introduced many European idioms to Canadian art music. CBC Music described him as a "pioneering Canadian composer" and The Canadian Encyclopedia described him as "one of Canada's most frequently commissioned composers."
Patricia Blomfield Holt was a Canadian composer, pianist and music educator. An associate of the Canadian Music Centre and a member of the Association of Canadian Women Composers, her compositions have been performed by notable musical ensembles throughout North America and Europe.
Ruth Louise Watson Henderson is a Canadian composer and pianist. She was the accompanist for the Festival Singers of Canada under Dr. Elmer Iseler for many years, where she developed her ear for composing mixed-choral works. Henderson also accompanied the Toronto Children's Chorus under Jean Ashworth Bartle from its inception in 1978 to 2007 and was music director for Kingsway-Lambton United Church in Toronto from 1996 to 2013.
Dinuk Wijeratne is a conductor, composer and pianist, living and working in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. His work Two Pop Songs on Antique Poems won both the 2016 Juno Award for Classical Composition of the Year and the 2016 East Coast Music Award for Classical Composition of the Year. His boundary-crossing musical collaborations include ground-breaking combinations of symphony orchestra and tabla, and string quartet and DJ.
Marylou Dawes or Mary Lou Dawes, was a Canadian concert pianist. She was one of Canada's leading accompanists, chamber musicians and soloists. She trained in Calgary and Austria and won the 3rd prize at the ARD International Music Competition, Munich, for duo with her brother Andrew Dawes in 1963. Marylou and Andrew played a concert for Queen Elizabeth II and The Duke of Edinburgh during their Royal visit to Regina in July 1973. She has toured across Canada, Europe, Mexico and the United States.
Elliot Weisgarber was a Canadian composer, clarinetist and ethnomusicologist at the University of British Columbia from 1960 to 1984.
Richard Gibson is a Canadian composer of contemporary classical music, and Professor of Composition at the Université de Moncton in New Brunswick.
Nicole Lizée is a Canadian composer of contemporary music. She was born in Gravelbourg, Saskatchewan and received a MMus from McGill University. She lives in Montreal, Quebec. At one time, she was a member of The Besnard Lakes, an indie rock band from Montreal.
Emily Lenore Doolittle is a Canadian composer, zoomusicologist, and Athenaeum Research Fellow and Lecturer in Composition at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland based in Glasgow, Scotland.
Cassandra Miller is a Canadian experimental composer currently based in London, England. Her work is known for frequently utilising the process of transcription of a variety of pre-existing pieces of music.
Stéphane Tétreault is a Canadian cellist. He first made international headlines as the recipient of Bernard Greenhouse's cello, the 1707 "Countess of Stainlein Ex-Paganini" Stradivarius, generously loaned to him by Mrs. Jacqueline Desmarais and following her passing by her daughter Mrs. Sophie Desmarais.
Megumi Masaki is a Japanese-Canadian pianist, multimedia artist, educator, researcher, arts administrator, conductor, and curator.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Artists | |
