Irritable Hedgehog here continues its focus with the first commercial recording of a work by noted Canadian composer Ann Southam, who passed away in 2010. Soundings for a New Piano was composed in 1986 and is distinctive in its blend of minimalist and modernist techniques and aesthetics. Southam employed the 12-tone technique developed by Arnold Schoenberg in the 1920s, albeit in her own fashion, but combined this with the additive minimalist repetitions of early minimalists such as Philip Glass. Over the years she forged an impressive body of music using this hybrid process. Southam was born in Winnipeg in 1937, but spent most of her life in Toronto, where she taught electronic music at the Royal Conservatory and composed extensively for modern dance companies. She was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada in 2010.