This recording is part of the Centrediscs’ Canadian Composers Portraits series which documents the emergence of a generation of pioneering professional composers who firmly established Canada’s place on the world’s musical map. Each release in this retrospective of the last fifty years is dedicated to a single composer and uniquely combines full-length documentaries on the composers’ lives and music, as well as a selection of their most important works.

« Chistina Petrowska Quilico gives an outstanding performance of these intricate minimalist works that range from contemplative to ebullient. »

– David Olds, Wholenote

« Southam is a minimalist, but her music resists all but the most superficial comparisons with Reich, Glass and the rest: she manages to be process-oriented and classical at the same time. Rating: 9 out of 10. »

– Jerry Bowles, Sequenza21

« In this context of the series of composer portraits, Rivers fits in nicely, representing a remarkable manifestation of minimalism in Canadian music. »
– Stephanie Moore, Musicworks

« Toronto virtuosa Christina Petrowska Quilico becomes the first pianist to perform Ann Southam’s Rivers cycle in its entirety tonight. The 19 solo piano pieces, written from 1979-1981, last a total of two hours, and demand extraordinary physical stamina from the player. Petrowska, whose recording of the cycle has just been released on the Centrediscs label, has the monster technique to pull it off. Built on intricately and unpredictably interlocking melodic patterns, the pieces carry the listener into shimmering, at times ecstatic, realms. »
– Tamara Bernstein, the National Post

« This music is intelligently absorbing, though not in the manner of a Beethoven sonata. It is pleasurable, though some will feel that each piece is too long. Listening to it is something like listening to Bach, where the beauty is in the piece and the execution, not in the performer’s creative thought processes. The performer must simply execute in a very skillful and highly aesthetic way, what the composer wrote. Kudos to Christina Petrowska Quilico, piano professor at York University in Toronto, for doing exactly that. »
– Kilpatrick, American Record Guide

Video:

Christina Petrowska Quilico performs Rivers No.8 by Ann Southam

Visit Christina’s web site at www.petrowskaquilico.com

CD 1

Southam documentary produced and prepared by Eitan Cornfield/

Documentaire sur Southam produit et présenté par Eitan Cornfield

CD 2-3

Rivers (complete/complet)

We acknowledge the financial support of the Department of Canadian Heritage.

Nous reconnaissons l’appui financier du ministère du Patrimoine canadien.

PERFORMERS:

Christina Petrowska Quilico, piano