Christina Petrowska Quilico shares a collection of archived video, images, and paintings as part of an extended reflection on the piano music of Ann Southam. The video includes thoughts and annotations regarding the creative dialogue between Ann and Christina as they worked through the score for Glass Houses, as well as Christina’s relationship to Southam’s Rivers.
In 2020, Canada’s Governor General named pianist Christina Petrowska Quilico to the Order of Canada, one of the country’s highest civilian honors. She was cited “for her celebrated career as a classical and contemporary pianist, and for championing Canadian music.” It was the latest recognition for a lifetime devoted to her art.
Born in Ottawa, Canada, Christina Petrowska Quilico was only 10 in her orchestral debut, playing the Haydn D major concerto with Toronto’s Conservatory Orchestra. She moved to New York when she was 13 to study on scholarship at the Juilliard School and the High School of Performing Arts. At 14, sharing top prize with Murray Perahia in a concerto competition, she played Mozart’s K.488 in New York. The Times hailed her as a “promethean talent” and she continued to give solo and chamber recitals at many of the city’s other venerated recital halls including Carnegie and Merkin halls, garnering superlatives from the city’s critics, who deemed her “an extraordinary talent with phenomenal ability…dazzling virtuosity”, playing Olivier Messiaen “to perfection”. Allen Hughes of the Times exalted her “beautiful clarity” in Liszt’s dazzling La Campanella, an encore to a program of forward-looking 20th century repertoire, noting, “Petrowska is a pianist and musician of refreshingly unconventional taste and ability…a welcome treat.” She appeared in Alice Tully Hall playing Debussy and music by living composers – including her first husband Michel-Georges Brégent (1948-93). In the Times again, Hughes noted that in those years, she “has proved several times over that she is a pianist and musician of more than ordinary attainments.” She took part in the 2018 festival celebrating Frederic Rzewski’s 80th birthday at Brooklyn’s Spectrum, and continues to include American music in her CDs and solo recitals.
She has performed 45 concertos with orchestras in the U.S., Greece and Taipei, and with most of Canada’s leading orchestras. Concerts have taken her across the U.S. and Canada, as well as to Taiwan, the Middle East, France, England, Germany, Greece and Ukraine.
CMC Presents Multilocation is generously supported by The Canada Council for the Arts, the Department of Canadian Heritage, The SOCAN Foundation, FACTOR, The Ontario Arts Council, The Toronto Arts Council, and the Ontario Arts Foundation. This presentation is also supported by The McLean Foundation and the Canada Arts Presentation Fund.
