Ann Southam facts for kids

Ann Southam (born February 4, 1937 – died November 25, 2010) was a Canadian composer and music teacher. She wrote both electronic music and classical music. Ann was known for her unique style, which often used simple musical ideas repeated and layered. She also worked closely with dance choreographers and performers for many years. She created a lot of music and was recognized for being a pioneer for women composers.

Ann was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 1937. She spent most of her life in Toronto, Ontario. She passed away at age 73 on November 25, 2010.

In 2010, she was made a Member of the Order of Canada. This is a very high honor in Canada.

Ann's Life Story

Ann Southam was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Her family had inherited money from a newspaper business, which helped her. When she was three, her family moved to Toronto, where she lived for the rest of her life.

Ann went to a private school for girls called the Bishop Strachan School. She later tried a business school but left after a year. During this time, she became very interested in music. She started writing her own music at age 15 in 1952. This happened after she went to a summer music camp at the Banff School, now known as The Banff Centre.

After leaving business school, Ann studied piano and music composition. She learned from Samuel Dolin at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. He introduced her to "tape music," which was a new way of making music using tape recorders. She also studied piano with Pierre Souvairan and electronic music with Gustav Ciamaga at the University of Toronto from 1960 to 1963. In 1966, she began teaching electronic music at the Royal Conservatory of Music.

In 1966, she met Patricia Beatty, a Canadian dancer who created dances. Soon after, Ann started writing music for Patricia's dance show. They became good friends. This led to Ann working with the New Dance Group of Canada, which later became the Toronto Dance Theatre. In 1968, she became their main composer. Over her life, she wrote about 30 pieces for the group. She also quietly gave them money to help them continue their work.

In 1977, Ann started an organization called Music Inter Alia in Winnipeg with Diana McIntosh. This group helped promote concerts until 1991.

She also helped start the Association of Canadian Women Composers in 1981 with Mary Gardiner. Ann was the first president of this group from 1980 to 1988. She later became a life member and honorary president.

Ann was also a composer connected with the Canadian Music Centre.

Many organizations asked Ann Southam to create music for them. These included the Canada Council, the Ontario Arts Council, the Music Gallery, and the CBC.

She was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2008. She passed away at age 73 on November 25, 2010. Two pianists, Eve Egoyan and Christina Petrowska-Quilico, performed at her memorial service.

Ann's Music

Ann's early music was very expressive and emotional. It was written in a Romantic style, even though it didn't always follow traditional harmony rules. She also used a technique called 12-tone, which uses all twelve notes of the musical scale equally.

People have said that Ann "composed with great skill." She wanted to make her electronic machines create warm and inviting sounds. She also wanted to bring electronic music to new places.

Ann's love for electronic music started in the 1960s. She built a music studio at home with synthesizers, tape recorders, and a mixer. She called it her "minimum of sound equipment." This included synthesizers like the AKS.

In the 1970s, Ann bought a house and put a grand piano in it. This is when she started writing music just for acoustic instruments for the first time. Her first pieces were Rivers and then Glass Houses. She asked Christina Petrowska-Quilico, a pianist, to record her playing these pieces. This was a way to save them. By 1982, Christina began playing these pieces live in her concerts.

In the 1980s, Ann became interested in music by American composers like Terry Riley and Steve Reich. These composers are known for their minimalist style. Her piece Glass Houses (from 1981) uses short, simple musical parts that combine and change. This creates a flowing, lyrical sound.

In the 1990s, Ann mostly stopped writing electronic music. She started creating more instrumental works. Some of these include Song of the Varied Thrush (1991) for string quartet, Webster's Spin (1993) for string orchestra, and Full Circles (1996, updated in 2005).

Ann once talked about her music and how she wanted it to reflect her ideas. She said she wanted to find a way to write music where the music itself would show her unique perspective. She felt that minimalist music, with its repeated patterns, reminded her of "women's work." These are often repetitive tasks like knitting or cleaning that are important for everyday life.

Ann's favorite quotes about herself were "staggeringly boring" from the Montreal Gazette and "a rather shadowy presence on the new-music scene" from The Globe and Mail.

Working with Others

Ann Southam worked with pianist Christina Petrowska-Quilico for over thirty years. They collaborated on pieces like Rivers (2005), Pond Life (2008), and Glass Houses. Ann updated Glass Houses in 2009, and Christina updated it in 2010. Their work together resulted in six music CDs. Christina also performed Rivers with the Toronto Dance Theatre in many cities across Canada.

Ann first met Eve Egoyan, another pianist, in 1998. David Jaeger from the Canadian Electronic Ensemble suggested Eve play on a new recording. Ann and Eve worked together on several projects in the late 1990s and early 2000s. These included Qualities of Consonance (1998), Figures (2001), In Retrospect (2004), and Simple Lines of Enquiry (2008).

Awards Ann Received

Ann Southam received the Friends of Canadian Music Award in 2002.

In 2010, Ann was named a Member of the Order of Canada. This award recognized her as "one of Canada's important women composers." It also honored her for her electronic, acoustic, and orchestral music, and for her generous donations and volunteer work. She was too ill to attend the ceremony herself.

In 2011, after she passed away, Ann was nominated for a Juno Award. This was for her piece "Glass House #5" from the CD "Glass Houses Revisited," recorded by Christina Petrowska Quilico.

Ann's Legacy

Ann Southam left $14 million to the Canadian Women's Foundation. This money created the Ann Southam Empowerment Fund and invested in the Girls' Fund. At the time, it was the largest private donation ever given to a Canadian women's organization.

Ann's published musical works are owned by the Canadian Music Centre. The Centre named its collection of recordings the Ann Southam Digital Audio Archive in her honor.

Her personal papers and other items are kept at the Banff Centre Paul D. Fleck Library and Archives.

Ann left five pieces of music unfinished. She had planned for Eve Egoyan to perform them. Eve recorded and released these performances as 5: Music of Ann Southam in 2013. The album is described as continuing Ann's interest in very slow, changing sounds. It uses a few simple chords where a musical pattern slowly unfolds, like a tulip opening in spring.

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)