Anna Pidgorna

Composer | Vocalist | Visual Artist

Category: Trips

  • Sounds of Kiev: Main train station

    This recording was taken in the main hall of the beautiful passenger train station in Kiev, Ukraine.

  • Flatten your throat and sing

    “Flatten your throat and send a nasty sound into your teeth.” That’s roughly what we were trying to do in the student folk ensemble led by the well-known Ukrainian ethnomusicologist Yevhen Yefremov. This week I was very lucky to sit in on a lecture on the modal organization of Ukrainian folksong given by professor Yefremov…

  • Ukraine: first days

    Achievements to date: learning how to use a cell phone with Russian menus and making a whole THREE phone calls to strangers (1 in Russian, 2 in Ukrainian). My sister and I left Canada last Friday. Two days and several long layovers later, we have finally arrived in Kiev. I was disappointed to discover that…

  • Bundle Update

    I’ve been lost in opera/thesis land for a while, hiding out in my parents’ jungle-like garden home. I haven’t been keeping up with the outside world all that well (the vegetation is thick!), but I bring you a few updates on older stuff and a peek at a new initiative to promote experimental music. A…

  • NAC Workshop: My Ottawa Debut

    I am writing this on the train to Montreal, the first leg of my epic 29-hour journey back to Halifax (still not sure how a train can take longer than a Greyhound bus). Last night was the final concert of the NAC Composers Program featuring five premieres by workshop participants (Lesley Hinger, Adam Scime, Patrick…

  • NAC Workshop: Day of Truth

    Tonight is the climax of the NAC Composers Program with performances of five premieres at the Southam Hall of the National Arts Centre. There will also be a piece by Chen Yi. After a week of sweating, correcting and second-guessing, we have to release our babies into the world. The info for the “Future classics”…

  • Dirty legato and musical parenting

    I’ve been in beautiful Ottawa since Friday afternoon. After three intense days with the NAC Composers Program, I am enjoying a semi-day off. I have an interview with the CBC Radio 1 this afternoon (tune in around 4:45 EST). I also did an interview for the NAC blog earlier. You can check it out here…

  • Off to Ottawa!

    I am at this very moment on the last leg of my 24 hour train journey from Halifax to Ottawa, where I will be participating in the National Arts Centre’s Composers Program with Gary Kulesha and Chen Yi. I will be workshoping a brand new piece, The Unanswered, for an 11-part chamber ensemble. I am…

  • Carnegie Hall Workshop: Post-mortem

    The child, bringer of light received its première at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall on Monday night. The hall was reasonably full, the audience quite varied. We were even graced with the presence of a group of nuns in dark blue and brown habit. I know music is a big part of religious culture, but it was…

  • Carnegie Hall Workshop: D-day

    I’m sitting in Zankel Hall watching the dress rehearsals for tonight’s big show. I am nervously excited. The countless small surgeries were successful and  The Child is now standing confidently on its feet. Paul Dwyer sounds truly amazing. I can’t say that enough. He has really made my piece his own, in his particular quiet…