Volume 21 Issue 2 - October 2015

continued from page 9
On the Record
work to life. As for the comfort of playing standard repertoire alongside,
I think I lost that – partly because so many others do it so much
better than me – but I think maybe my audiences miss that a little in
terms of the context that mixed repertoire can bring.”
Maybe when this disc is out, she says, she’ll give it some more
thought. By then the upcoming Subtle Technologies fundraiser will
be over, as will her recording of Maria de Alvear’s two-hour diptych
De puro amor and En amor duro (which will be released in 2016). But
by then planning for her 2016 Earwitness Tour of works for disklavier
and image will be in high gear – a tour which will include, among
others, venues such as the Other Minds Festival (San Francisco),
Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theatre (Los Angeles), University of
California Santa Barbara, University of California Irvine, Stanford
University and the Musée des beaux arts de Montréal at Bourgie Hall.
So maybe the thought will have to wait.
Next spring’s Earwitness tour is a clear indicator of some of the
directions Egoyan’s passionate exploration of
her art is taking her. “It’s an exploration of how
“My dialogue with
other artists and art
forms through what
I produce is very
important to me.”
music can intersect with visual arts in such a
way that they are truly married,” she says. There
was an early incarnation of the idea for disklavier
and image at Koerner Hall during the 2013
inaugural 21C Festival. But it has grown by leaps
and bounds since then, to include pieces by
John Oswald, Nicole Lizée, Michael Snow and,
hopefully Chiyoko Szlavnics, with two of the
works being for disklavier, but also one for amplified piano, one for
piano and sine tones and one for acoustic piano.
“It’s a project that’s just growing and growing” she says. “But it
is a very delicate project, because the music and the image have to
blend. It’s not just music accompanying a visual narrative; it’s not
just patterns you are seeing visually to mimic the music. It’s actually
quite rigorous. And so people who are working with this, because
Canada has a richness of them, are usually artists who are not only
musicians but also visual artists. So the mandate is to see if there
can truly be a new – I don’t want to call it a new art form – but yeah,
how much success can one have in bringing the two art forms into a
closer relationship?”
As if all this were not enough, she reveals that for the past two years
she has also been trying to eke out enough time to explore composition,
under the terms of a Chalmers Arts Fellowship. “I didn’t realize
until I started taking time away from my interpretive practice how
different they were. I mean with interpretation you have a score,
there’s always an end point to move towards. An hour, two hours. But
with creation it’s not at all like that. But it’s something that I passionately
want to explore.”
Fully expecting an affirmative response, I ask if improvisation has
been a useful bridge for her between the two. “ I had thought it would
be,” she says. “I actually started there but it became very unsatisfying.
In my project as originally proposed, I was going to – because I work
in ProTools for my rough editing as well – I thought I would be able
to pick my way through improvisations creating a collage, but that
just fell apart. So I feel like I am just teaching myself the very basics of
the craft. Slowly. Whether anything gets performed, ever, right now I
don’t know.”
As we talk I remark that it is fascinating to observe how she is able
in the same instant to open herself to new ideas while at the same
time managing not to be distracted by them from the task at hand.
“There’s an energy issue involved,” she says, “because I also self–
administrate, doing all the grant writing, all the tour arrangements,
stuff like that, and I have to keep time for my creative work. So as far
as developing other creative projects, I have to be able to say that’s
enough. And I’m a mother (we’re going to Barber of Seville tomorrow,
by the way) and there’s a birthday party in two weeks ... and I have
aging parents. As far as sanity and quality of the work go, that’s the
picture for now. But that being said, I’m in discussion for 2017 for
a possible commission for a very interesting concerto – I have my
fingers crossed. It would mean a huge deal if it happens (and I can’t
talk about it yet). In fact there’s a lot of things I
can’t talk about yet. So many exciting ideas and so
many people. I can’t shut myself down creatively.
But I have learned how to parcel things off into the
future so I can do my best work in the present with
what I already have to do. So that’s what I do.”
As for remaining in the present, as of writing
this, the CD launch concert for Thought and Desire
is now only a few weeks away (October 16, 17, 18 at
8pm). In the choice of venue and the program for
the evening it is in and of itself a microcosm of the mix of thought and
desire that infuse Egoyan’s artistic praxis.
Take the venue, for example: “I decided for the release concert,
because it’s very quiet music, to bring it to a space I have never used,
Small World Music at Artscape, which seats about 60 people. I’m
bringing a piano in and I’m going to do it for multiple nights, so that
people can be close to the quiet. I would usually do things at the
Gould or the St. Lawrence Centre (and they are lovely and the pianos
are lovely). In fact the only thing I am giving up here is the piano. A
nine-foot won’t fit in the elevator and to get it up the stairs would
be really expensive. But the size of the space is lovely and, as a selfpresenting
artist, to have to blow such a huge part of the budget on
a hall is always tough. Here people have the opportunity to go more
than once or to pick a day.... And I like that it’s somewhere between
super casual and super formal, and it’s raked, and has a tiny stage,
so there’s that balance between separation and closeness. I am
trying to find a place that has a balance between slightly formal but
also intimate.”
It’s a description that speaks to the striving for a balance between
adventure and equilibrium in this always interesting artist’s life.
David Perlman is the publisher and editor-in-chief of The
WholeNote. He can be reached at publisher@thewholenote.com
Three major new orchestral works by Tim Brady, featuring
impressive live performances by Symphony Nova Scotia, under
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Concertos with Robert Uchida (violin) and Jutta Puchhammer-Sédillot
(viola), and the first recording of Symphony #4.
YouTube: Tim Brady & Symphony Nova Scotia
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