Anna Pidgorna

Composer | Vocalist | Visual Artist

Category: My work

  • Music through fire

    So I’ve been planning this idea of burning musical notation onto a wooden door for over a year now (see this post). I finally got around to trying it out on a scrap piece of wood the other day. To my intense relief, it worked! Phew! This is an excerpt drawn from my new violin…

  • Piano Trio Premiere

    On Wednesday (March 5), the Gryphon Trio will premiere my piano trio, Toss a flower on the water, which was created as part of the Soundstreams Emerging Composers’ Workshop. The performance will take place in the lobby of Roy Thomson Hall as part of a pre-concert event happening at TSO’s New Creations Festival, starting at 7:15 pm. The…

  • Super concert with Thin Edge

    I just want to say that I am thrilled with how the Thin Edge concert went last Friday. Gallery 345 is a beautiful space with great acoustics. The new violin duo, Through closed doors, looked great in there and Ilana and Suhashini sounded FANTASTIC! I couldn’t be happier with the piece at this stage in the…

  • New Year = New Notation

    As discussed earlier, I am working on a piece for two violins built around an antique wooden door. Since this piece is already in an unusual form, I thought I would make it even more complicated by trying out some new notational techniques. I have completely done away with dynamic markings and bow pressure indications.…

  • New Year = New Media

    I started off 2014 with a brand new piece: a violin duo for Thin Edge New Music Collective. This piece is a fortuitous coming together of a commission and an idea that had been stewing at the back of my mind for quite some time. To earn a living, I spend quite a bit of…

  • 2013 Review

    I know I’m a little late on this, but it’s been busy! My 2013 had a fantastically overloaded ending. Here’s a summary of my year: 1. Finished my opera On the eve of Ivan Kupalo in early January. It was premiered in late January at the Happening Festival in Calgary. It was like delivery a…

  • Connection through performance

    Last Friday, the super talented Rachel Mercer performed The Child, Bringer of Light at the Betty Oliphant Theatre as part of Toronto’s New Music Concerts. This concert has yet again made me feel how fantastically lucky I have been over the course of my young career to work with such amazing and dedicated performers. Rachel…

  • Appearance in Manor House

    I am happy to report that excerpts of my piece The Child, Bringer of Light, will appear in the upcoming issue of the art journal, Manor House Quarterly. The score excerpts will be accompanied by an analysis by Cooper Troxell, the journal’s composition editor. MHQ is a beautifully put-together publication covering contemporary visual arts, literature, music…

  • Two SOCAN wins

    I am super excited to finally announce that I received two prizes in this year’s SOCAN Awards for Young Composers. My chamber opera On the Eve of Ivan Kupalo, which was my master’s thesis project, received a shared first prize in the Godfrey Ridout vocal category. Congratulations also to Marie-Claire Saindon, who is sharing the win with…

  • Soundstreams post-mortem

    It’s been about a month since I returned from Toronto and I’m just waking up from my post-masters hibernation. I’ve done no composing since the Soundstreams workshop, and after deadening my brain with hundred-year-old dust and pain fumes at a heritage house reno over the last four weeks, I feel ready to jump back into…