Ann Southam

Ann Southam
Born	(1937-02-04)4 February 1937 Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Died	Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Occupation	Composer

Ann Southam, CM (4 February 1937 – 25 November 2010) was a Canadian composer and music teacher. She was born Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1937, and lived most of her life in Toronto, Ontario. Her father, Kenneth Gordon Southam, was a great-grandson of newspaper baron William Southam.

She began composing at age 15 after attending a summer music camp at the Banff School (now known as The Banff Centre). She studied composition with Samuel Dolin at the Royal Conservatory of Music. She studied piano with Pierre Souvairan and electronic music with Gustav Ciamaga at the University of Toronto from 1960 to 1963. She began teaching at the Royal Conservatory of Music in 1966.

She was a founding member, first president (1980–88), life member (2002) and honorary president (2007) of the Association of Canadian Women Composers. She was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada in 2010. She was also an associate composer of the Canadian Music Centre, which named its recording collection the Ann Southam Digital Audio Archive. She began a collaboration with the New Dance Group of Canada (later known as Toronto Dance Theatre) in 1967, where she became composer-in-residence in 1968. Southam was awarded with the Friends of Canadian Music Award in 2001. She died, aged 73, on 25 November 2010. In her will she left $14 million to the Canadian Women's Foundation.

Biography

Music

Southam's early works are lyrical atonal pieces were written in a Romantic style, and lyricism remained an important element of her later electronic scores. She also worked with 12-tone techniques.

In 1966 she was introduced to Patricia Beatty, a Canadian choreographer who had just returned from studying modern dance in New York. Shortly afterward, Southam began working on a new score for Beatty's adaptation of Macbeth and the two became friends. In the 1980s, Southam began developing an interest in music by American minimalists Terry Riley and Steve Reich. Her composition Glass Houses (1981) is constructed from short tonal units that combine and re-combine, creating an overall sense of lyricism.

In the 1990s Southam largely abandoned the electroacoustic compositional style and began creating instrumental works such as Song of the Varied Thrush (1991) for string quartet; Webster's Spin (1993) for string orchestra, and Full Circles (1996, rev. 2005).

Southam worked on several collaborative projects with Eve Egoyan throughout the late 90s and early 2000s including: Qualities of Consonance (1998), Figures (2001), In Retrospect (2004), and Simple Lines of Enquiry (2008). Ann Southam worked over 30 years with her collaborator, Christina Petrowska Quilico on Rivers (2005), Pond Life (2008) and Glass Houses which was revised by Southam in 2009 and by Quilico in 2010.

Selected compositions

Chamber

• Rhapsodic Interlude for Violin Alone (1963)
• Momentum (1967)
• Configurations (1973)
• CounterPlay (1973)
• Integruities (G. Arbour, M. Thompson) (1975)
• Interviews (Arbour, Thompson) (1976)
• Towards Green (1976)
• Waves (1976)
• Networks (1978)
• Re-tuning (1985)
• Quintet (1986)
• Alternate Currents, Percussion Music for Solo Performer (1987)
• Throughways: Improvising Music" (1988)
• Song of the Varied Thrush (1991)
• The Music So Far (1992)
• This Time (1992)
• Webster's Spin (1993)
• Full Circles (1996 rev. 2005)
• Music for Strings (2000)
• Figures: Music for Piano and String Orchestra (2001)

Piano

• Suite for Piano (1960)
• Four Bagatelles (1961)
• Three in Blue (1965)
• Quodlibet (1966)
• Five Pieces in a Jazz Manner (1970)
• Five Shades of Blue (1970)
• Rivers: Set 1 (1979); Set 2 (1979); Set 3 (1981)
• Cool Blue; Red Hot (1980)
• Four in Hand (1981)
• Glass Houses (1981)
• Soundings for a New Piano (1986)
• Spatial View of Pond (1986)
• In a Measure of Time (1988)
• Remembering Schubert (1993)
• Qualities of Consonance (1998)
• Two by Two (2000)
• In Retrospect (2004)
• Simple Lines of Enquiry (2008)
• Pond Life (2008)

Electronic

• A Thread of Sand. (1969)
• Boat, River, Moon. (1972)
• Sky-Sails (1973)
• L'Assassin Menace. (1974)
• Mythic Journey. (1974)
• Walls and Passageways(1974)
• The Reprieve. (1975)
• Nighthawks. (1976)
• Rude Awakening. (1976)
• Soundplay. (1978)
• Seastill. (1979)
• The Story's Dream. (1980)
• The Emerging Ground. (1983)
• Rewind. (1984)
• Music for Slow Dancing. (1985)
• Goblin Market. (1986)
• Fluke Sound. (1989)

Discography

• Canadian Music for Piano. Louise Bessette piano. 1993. CBC Records MVCD 1064
• Virtuoso Piano Music of Our Own Time. Christina Petrowska piano. 1993. JLH Lasersound JLH 1002 DDD
• Mystic Streams. Christina Petrowska piano. 1996. Welspringe CD WEL001
• Northern Sirens Christina Petrowska Quilico piano 1998 York Fine Arts YFA00999
• Seastill: The Electronic Music of Ann Southam. 1998. Furiant Records FMDC 4604-2
• Fluke Sound. Furiant Records FMDC 4677-2
• Glass Houses: Music of Ann Southam. Eve Egoyan piano, Stephen Clarke piano. 1999. CBC Records MVCD 1124
• Canadian Composer Portraits - Ann Southam. Christina Petrowska Quilico piano, Eitan Cornfield producer/narrator. 2005. Centrediscs CMCCD 10505 (3 CDs)
• Simple Lines of Enquiry. Eve Egoyan piano. 2009. Centrediscs CMCCD 14609
• Pond Life. Christina Petrowska Quilico piano. 2009. Centrediscs CMCCD 14109 (2 CDs)
• Glass Houses Revisited. Christina Petrowska Quilico piano. 2011. Centrediscs CCMCD 16511
• Glass Houses Volume 2 Christina Petrowska Quilico piano 2014. Centrediscs CMCCD 20114
• Glass Houses Complete Christina Petrowska Quilico piano 2015 Centrediscs CMCD 22215

References

Further reading

• Anderson, C. "Choice and interpretation: Ann Southam in conversation with Carol Anderson." Musicworks, 46 (1990): 4–10.
• Báthory-Kitz, Dennis and David Gunn. "If Only I Could Sing: Ann Southam in Conversation with Kalvos and Damian." Musicworks 71 (Summer 1998). Online edition (Accessed 30 December 2007). Also published in "Ann Southam: If Only I Could Sing." eContact! 10.2 — Interviews (1) (July 2008). Montréal: CEC.
• Bernstein, Tamara. "Anne Southam," in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, edited by S. Sadie and J. Tyrrell. London: Macmillan, 2001.
• Egoyan, Eve. "Composition as Enquiry: the explorational music of Ann Southam." Musicworks 101, (2008): 38–45
• Everett-Green, Robert. "Ann Southam, a one woman tone poem" Globe and Mail. (July 9, 2009, R1)
• Lee, R. Andrew. "Anne Southam: Soundings for a New Piano" (1986). Streamed free from Irritable Hedgehog Music.
• MacMillan, R. Ann Southam. Don Mills, Ont.: PRO Canada, 1981.
• Mason, R. Ann Southam's new music (Throughways). Music Scene 367, (1989): 22.
• Poole, E. "Composer has a tough tone row to hoe." Globe and Mail (15 March 1997).

External links

• Canadian Music Centre
• "Ann Southam" on CBC Music

See also

• Music of Canada
• List of Canadian composers