“Through closed doors” score published

I’m happy to announce that the paper score for my violin duo Through Closed Doors, notated on an antique door, is now available for purchase from my publisher Oxingale Music. The work was commissioned and premiered by Ilana Waniuk and Suhashini Arulanandam in the winter of 2014. The duo was inspired by an antique door which had been attacked by a teenager girl in a fit of passion, resulting in a jagged hole. I structured the piece around the door’s different panels, creating a kind of choreography for the two performers who move around the door as they play. The notation drew on medieval illuminated manuscripts and incorporates dynamics, accents and bow pressure right into the staff lines for a more intuitive performance. Since the door is rather large and expensive to transport (though it does have a travel case if anyone is interested in renting it), I also made a paper score, which is now available for purchase here.

The premiere of the work from a draft paper score drawn with pencil happened in February 2014, right during the most difficult days of the Maidan protests in Ukraine, which ousted the pro-russian president Yanukovych, a corrupt criminal who was trying to bring Ukraine back into russia’s sphere of influence. I watched livestreams of tires burning in the centre of Kyiv, the people fearlessly resisting a regime rapidly growing increasingly oppressive, as we rehearsed the work. I cannot think of this piece separately from these protests, especially now, knowing the chain of events that eventually forced Ukraine to defend itself yet again against russia’s imperialist aggression.

“Weeping for a dead love” score now published

My publisher, Oxingale Music, just released the newly revised and renotated score for the first piece I ever wrote for myself to sing. Weeping for a dead love, for low female voice and percussion quartet, draws on Ukraine’s lamentation tradition, known as gholosinnia, to mourn the dissolution of a romantic relationship. I wrote it for myself and my own semi-folk singing style, not imagining that another singer would take on this rather peculiar work. But not only did another singer take it on, she was a classically trained singer, which I didn’t expect at all. Svitlana Melnyk, a mezzo-soprano who fled from Kharkiv at the start of russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, gave multiple performances of this work in Italy with the students of Istituto Superiore di Studi Musicali di Reggio Emilia in the summer of 2022, connecting to it in a way that was very special to me. She demonstrated that the piece works for a more classically sounding voice and that it is very emotionally relevant to the current moment. So I decided to make it available to others. The score is available for purchase here.

Here is my performance of the piece, premiered with So Percussion at Princeton University’s Sound Kitchen in the spring of 2015.

And here’s Svitlana Melnyk performing the work in Italy in the summer of 2023.

Lekking Birds

In 2020, when the live music industry was at a virtual standstill, I wrote “Lekking Birds” for Kornel Wolak (clarinet), Amahl Arulanandam (cello) and Michael Bridge (accordion). Commissioned by The Women’s Musical Club of Toronto, the work received its “premiere” in November 2020, in an empty concert hall in Toronto, live-streamed only to a select group of subscribers. I watched the live stream from my house in Vancouver, drinking wine with my trio of stuffed Mices (Masters Sneaky Mouse, Elph and Orph) and I cried.

The pandemic really made me understand how much I value live performance. Recordings can be great, for obvious reasons, but I like to be in the concert hall, surrounded by other people, feeling their response. I like the whole ritual of it. I like getting feedback from the audience. I love going out for drinks with the performers and other composers after the show, to celebrate success and commiserate about things that didn’t go as well as we hoped.

The experience of this particular premiere – watching friends play to an empty hall on my laptop screen while drinking with small stuffed animals – was so depressing at that moment in time that I just broke down and cried. I think because of that association, I kind of put this piece on a shelf for three years. I couldn’t touch it. But I recently dug it up and listened to the recording more thoroughly and discovered that I am really quite proud of the piece. I love this particular combination of timbres so much that I spent the last four minutes (Third Choreography) cycling through one short chord progression. The accordion – sitting somewhere between winds and strings in its timbre – blends the clarinet and cello so perfectly. It’s molten chocolate pouring from vessel to vessel.

And here recording does have a beautiful advantage over live performance: because of the close placement of the microphones, you can really hear the phrases travel from instrument to instrument, from left to right speaker or earbud, in a way that would not be as apparent in a hall with such a small ensemble. And this is really what the piece is exploring, passing material back and forth with small variations to mimic the fluttering, hopping group mating displays of the blue manakin bird.

A big thank you to Kornel, Amahl and Michael for this immaculate bird display.

New Publisher

I am happy to announce that my music is now published by Oxingale Music. We are slowly editing scores and adding them to the catalogue. All inquiries about score purchase and rentals should go to Oxingale. If you are interested in purchasing something not currently in the catalogue, reach out to the publisher anyway and we’ll try to make it happen.

Keening Songs

A couple of years ago, while taking a class on Irish orality taught by renowned sean nós singer Iarla Ó Lionáird, I received an email asking me if I was interested in writing a set of art songs based on Irish poetry. It was a beautiful coincidence and of course, I was delighted! The Irish Song Project lead by Dáirine Ní Mheadhra and Pauline Ashwood commissioned a total of 50 songs from Irish and international composers with the aim of increasing the number of art songs in the Irish language. For various complex political and historical reasons, Irish tends to be associated with oral folk traditions while the classical world, even in Ireland, is dominated by English. The project was funded by the Irish Arts Council. All the scores and recordings are now available for use free of charge on a website hosted by the Irish Contemporary Music Centre. The texts are accompanied by IPA and word-for-ward translations, as well as poetry readings.

Because of my interest in lamentation traditions, I chose excerpts from three keening texts to set for soprano and piano. “Eileen’s Lament” is based on excerpts from the most famous of Irish laments composed by Eibhlín (Eileen) Dubh Ní Chonaill upon the death of her young husband, Art Ó Laoghaire. What I chose to focus on are the young widow’s ruminations about her husband’s erotic appeal, the luxurious life they shared, as well as his quick temper, which she sometimes had to navigate. “Mother’s Lament” draws on excerpts from a larger lament composed by the mother of Diarmaid MacCarthy upon his death, which also includes several verses lamenting her daughter Máire, who was severely abused by her husband. “Joking Lament” is a setting of several verses from a mock lament, written from the point of view of a woman who is ecstatic at the death of her abusive and miserly husband.

The scores and recordings can be found here and are available for use according to the Creative Commons license.

One day, two concerts

October 3rd will be a first for me: my music will be performed in two countries located on different continents on the same day. In Toronto, Canada there will be the premiere of The Three Woes for three trumpets and string orchestra at Top Brass presented by Soundstreams. Earlier the same day, Ilana Waniuk will play the new violin version of The Child, Bringer of Light in Selianitika, Greece. And just a few days ago, Wild Shore New Music and Cipher duo premiered Lullabies for my unborn children while on tour in Alaska, USA. I feel like a pretty lucky duck all around.

Premiere with Soundstreams

I am currently in Toronto – feeling very giddy and under slept from all the time-zone travel – getting ready for the premiere of my latest work The Three Woes for three trumpets and string orchestra commissioned by Soundstreams for their Top Brass concert happening on October 3. The work will be performed by three world-renowned trumpet soloists, Ingrid Jensen, Jens Lindemann and Ole Edvard Antonsen, and a string orchestra conducted by Joaquin Valdepeñas. I am, understandably, quite elated.

The work is quite unusual for me in terms of subject matter. I tend to write things that are intensely personal, fussing endlessly tiny details performed by small ensembles, but for this piece I turned to the end of the world prophesy from the Book of Revelations. Since I wasn’t raised Christian (or with any religion at all), this prophesy, with all its highly imaginative horrors, initially read as delightful mythology to me. Flying locusts with lion heads and scorpion tails! Blood soaked oceans! Armies of 200 million led by rogue angels! It all seemed kind of cute and sensationalist in its extravagance, that is until I started noticing the eery parallels between the catastrophes the prophesy promised and the current and predicted effects of climate change. With its creative metaphors, the prophesy is actually describing what is happening to us. The piece became rather unsettling once this thought invaded my brain…

The concert also features premieres from Heather Schmidt and Brian Current. Heather will be playing in her own double concerto, and Brian is responding to R. Murray Schafer’s Trumpet Aubade (also on the program). I am honoured to be in their company and to be working with such incredible players.

You can read more about this piece and the concert as a whole in one of these delightful articles:

The Whole Note: https://www.thewholenote.com/index.php/newsroom/feature-stories/29527-soundstreams-and-the-trumpets-of-october

Ludwig Van Toronto: https://www.ludwig-van.com/toronto/2019/09/30/interview-fresh-views-anna-pidgorna-heather-schmidt-ingrid-jensen-soundstreams-top-brass/

Alaska Tour with Wild Shore

I am traveling around Alaska for the next ten days with the Wild Shore Festival, stopping in Anchorage, Talkeetna, Kenai and Homer. Wild Shore commissioned a brand new piece from me for the combined forces of Wild Shore Trio (Katie Cox, flute, Andie Springer, violin, Mary Kouyoumdjian, piano) and Cipher Duo (Justine Aronson, soprano, Sarah Goldfeather, violin). Lullabies for my unborn children is a set of songs which explore my complex maternal feelings in all their tender and painful shades. We are also performing my violin duo Through closed doors, notated on an antique door (unfortunately, the door itself was too difficult too ship) and Keening, a quartet originally commissioned by UltraViolet Ensemble and rearranged especially for this festival. There will also be works by Sarah Goldfeather, Kamala Sankaram and Kate Soper.

09/22/2019, 7:30pm – CIPHER Duo + Wild Shore Trio play music by Anna PidgornaSarah GoldfeatherKamala Sankaram, & Kate Soper.
Sheldon Community Arts Hangar
Talkeetna, AK 99676
Tickets: $15 suggested donation

09/26/2019, 6:30pm – CIPHER Duo + Wild Shore Trio play music by Anna PidgornaSarah GoldfeatherKamala Sankaram, & Kate Soper.
Kenai Fine Art Center
816 Cook Ave., Kenai, AK 99611
Tickets: Free! General Admission

09/28/2019, 7:30pm – CIPHER Duo + Wild Shore Trio play music by Anna PidgornaSarah GoldfeatherKamala Sankaram, & Kate Soper.
Bunnell Street Arts Center
106 W. Bunnell Ave., Homer, AK 99603
Tickets: Purchase here

09/29/2019, 7:30pm – CIPHER Duo + Wild Shore Trio play music by Anna PidgornaSarah GoldfeatherKamala Sankaram, & Kate Soper.
University of Alaska Anchorage
3211 Providence Dr, Anchorage, AK 99508
Tickets: Free! General Admission

Opera in the middle of Kansas

I recently spent a week in Russell, a small town smack in the middle of Kansas, and almost in the very center of America. This is my second visit to this community which hosts an annual three-week music festival called Ad Astra. The festival, with the participation of the whole community, is commissioning a full-length chamber opera from me and my writer sister Maria Reva, which will premiere at Prairiesta 2021, a giant town fair that happens once every ten years. It’s been an incredible experience getting to know this fascinating, art-filled community while researching the story of local art teacher Trudy Furney. While last year Maria and I conducted a bunch of interviews who knew this remarkable lady, this year we introduced the community to some of my music and Maria’s writing. Can’t wait to get going on this project!

Also, I got to see an albino donkey. How cool is that? He’s hiding in the little donkey house. You can see him peaking out shyly…

I-Park Residency

I was lucky enough to spend four weeks of June at the I-Park artists’ residency in East Haddam, Connecticut along with six other incredible artists: Sarah E. Brook, Gina Kamentsky, Sharon Koelblinger, Brenna K. Murphy, Clarisse Baleja Saidi and Hui-Ying Tsa. The place is like adult summer camp and we were a fun crew enjoying happy hours on the Floating Living Room on the pond, swimming at various local beaches, sweating in the sauna and improvising an endless stream of songs ranging from the heartfelt to the comedic (or both). In between the merriment, we also got a little work done. I made many recordings of the local soundscape (the frog choruses here are incredible!) and worked on a commission for the Wild Shore Festival in Homer, Alaska. This set of lullabies explores my maternal feelings and draws poetic imagery from my visit to Homer in March during a residency at the Bunnell Street Arts Centre.