Ann Southam

Ann Southam, (4 February 1937 – 25 November 2010) was a Canadian composer and music teacher. She is known for her minimalist-influenced style, her work in electronic music, her long-term collaborations with performers and choreographers, her large body of work, and, according to The Globe and Mail, "blazing a trail for women composers in a notoriously sexist field".

She was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada in 2010.

Biography Southam was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, on 4 February 1937. She was the great-great-granddaughter of Canadian newspaper baron William Southam, and benefited from the inherited wealth of the family business. In 1966, she began teaching electroacoustic composition at the Royal Conservatory.

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.

Music

Southam's early works are lyrical atonal pieces written in a Romantic style, and lyricism remained an important element of her later electronic work. She also worked with the twelve-tone technique. (1981) is constructed from short tonal units that combine and re-combine, creating an overall sense of lyricism. In the 1990s, Southam largely abandoned electronic music 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).

In 2010, Southam was named a Member of the Order of Canada but was too ill to attend the ceremony.

In 2011, Southam was posthumously nominated for a Juno Award for her composition "Glass House #5". This was, at the time, the largest private donation to a Canadian woman's organization. The Centre named its recording collection the Ann Southam Digital Audio Archive in her honor. The disc is described as "a continuation of the composer's fascination with very slow, kaleidoscopic transformation of sound using a few very simple chords inside of which a tone row gradually unfolds at the speed of a tulip blossom opening on a warm, sunny spring morning".

Selected compositions Piano Suite for Piano (1960) Four Bagatelles (1961) Sea Flea (1962) Three in Blue (1965) Quodlibet (1967) 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 (15 pieces, 1981) Soundings for a New Piano (1986) Spatial View of Pond (1986) In a Measure of Time (1988) Remembering Schubert (1993) Where? (1995) Qualities of Consonance (1998) Two by Two (2000) In Retrospect (2004) Commotion creek (2007) Simple Lines of Enquiry (2007) Pond Life (2008)

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, for piano, 2 violins, viola, and cello (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, for string orchestra (1993) Full Circles (1996 rev. 2005) Music for Strings (2000) Figures: Music for Piano and String Orchestra (2001)

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 Quilico 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 CMCCD 16511 Glass Houses Volume 2. Christina Petrowska Quilico piano. 2014. Centrediscs CMCCD 20114 Glass Houses Complete. Christina Petrowska Quilico piano. 2015. Centrediscs CMCCD 22215 Soundspinning. Christina Petrowska Quilico piano. 2018. Centrediscs CMCCD 26018