BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//Date iCal//NONSGML kigkonsult.se iCalcreator 2.20.2// METHOD:PUBLISH BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/New_York BEGIN:STANDARD DTSTART:20251102T020000 TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 TZNAME:EST END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT DTSTART:20260308T020000 TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 TZNAME:EDT END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT UID:calendar.4603.events_uoft_date.0@www.humanities.utoronto.ca CREATED:20260130T160417Z DESCRIPTION:\nWhen and Where: \nThursday, March 12, 2026 12:10 pm to 1:00 pm \n Walter Hall \n Faculty of Music \n 80 Queens Park, Toronto, ON M5 S 2C5 \n\nDescription: \nJoin us for the free world premiere of In Stone, a concert by composer Eve Egoyan, JHI’s 2025–26 Artist in Residence, pr esented as part of the Thursdays at Noon series. Written for augmented aco ustic piano in response to the JHI theme Dystopia and Trust, In Stone ref lects on the Armenian Genocide and the ongoing struggle to hold truth amid denial, drawing on Armenian sacred and folk music, field recordings, a nd the natural world as witness. The Thursdays at Noon series is made poss ible in part by the Jay Telfer Forum Endowment Fund.Livestream will be ava ilable on the Faculty of Music YouTube channel.About Eve EgoyanEve Egoyan is an internationally active Canadian pianist and composer of Armenian her itage. She was trained in the classical piano repertoire in Canada, Engla nd, and Germany, and completed an MMus degree at the University of Toron to in 1992. She has released over a dozen solo CDs concentrating on contem porary repertoire by Canadian and international composers, including many works commissioned for her. During the past 15 years, Egoyan has explore d the use of cutting-edge technology to expand the expressive possibilitie s of the acoustic piano and incorporate real-time audio and visual effects into live performance. More recently, she has been researching and perfo rming music by Armenian composers.Program Note“In Stone” is a new work for augmented acoustic piano reflecting on the Armenian Genocide. I am honour ed to have been selected as Artist-in-Residence at the Jackman Humanities Institute in partnership with the Faculty of Music. “In Stone” has been co mposed in response to Jackman Humanities Institute’s annual theme 'Dystopi a and Trust'.From 1915 to 1923, more than 1.5 million Armenians were kill ed, and half a million survivors were exiled by the Ottoman Empire. The w idespread violence, forced deportations, starvation, and mass killings inflicted upon the Armenian population, which still remains unacknowledge d by its perpetrators and successor states, became a template for subsequ ent genocides.Armenians around the world hold within themselves resonances from this violent past. It is an agonizing reality for Armenians today th at the genocide has been interpreted differently by its perpetrators. Livi ng with a distorted past raises the haunting question, who then is entrus ted with the truth?We see across the globe today how very difficult it is to hold onto the truth. Truth is being constantly undermined by darker for ces.It is excruciatingly painful for Armenians to have to defend the truth of the Armenian genocide and, in our own lifetime, of ethnic cleansing of Armenians in Arstakh, the Nagorno-Karabakh region now occupied by Azer baijan.How can I as an artist express this unspeakable past in this equall y distressing present moment?My ancestors live deeply in my soul. “In Ston e” is an attempt to sing their song amidst the plethora of human songs tha t need to be heard in our time. Nature herself is singing loudly to us thr ough climate change.“In Stone” attempts to situate nature as a witness to human atrocity.I share my Armenian story by bringing into this composition fragments from sacred ancient Armenian hymns, pastoral and folkloric son gs, and folkloric instruments. The songs and hymns are fragmented to expr ess a feeling of both presence and loss. The meandering feeling of the com positional form echoes the wandering tradition of troubadour story-telling .On Armenian ancestral lands there remain hand-carved stones including Kha chkar, our crosses, and remnants of our stone churches amongst other sto nes. Through carved inscriptions and images they literally hold the Armeni an language and artistic imagination within them, carrying our words, ou r prayers, our essence, held ”In stone” through time past to time presen t and into the future. These stone remains are scattered across the landsc ape like diasporic Armenians are scattered across the world. Gardens and o rchards planted by Armenians on the historical land of Western Armenia rem ain. Stones, plants, birds, sky, water - they bear witness.The title o f my work, “In Stone”, refers to stones on ancient land holding resonanc es of the past, the past both human and non-human. I trust in nature as w itness and guardian of the truth.Detailed musical references:While in Yere van, Armenia, I recorded folk musicians from the Naregatsi Orchestra per forming on folk instruments. Recordings of the wind instruments Shvi (high wooden flute) and Blul (shepherd’s flute) are used to echo the sound of b irdsong; Kanun (large plucked zither instrument) glissandi runs reference water. I also use recordings of Qamancha (bowed string instrument), Dudu k (double-reed woodwind instrument), Santur (hammered dulcimer), Tar (lu te) and a field recording of Armenian birdsong taken while hiking the Khos rov Forest State Nature Reserve, Armenia, with my family.Compositional f ragments from the following Armenian spiritual and folk music sources:'Zar manali e Indz” (“It is Wonderous to me”) Written by 8th-century Armenian h ymnographer and poet Khosrovidukht who is one of the earliest, perhaps ev en the earliest, women composer, whose music survives to this day.”Havun Havun' (“To the Bird”- alluding to the Holy Ghost) One of the oldest know n Armenian sacred hymns. Attributed to Grigor Narekatsi from the10th-centu ry.“Arabkir Bar” (“Arabkir Dance”) A dance from the city of Arabkir where my orphaned paternal grandfather was born.“Yeraz” (“Dream”) The song that my orphaned paternal grandmother sung to my father. “Yeraz” or “Dream” is about a child dreaming they heard their mother’s voice (my grandmother dre aming she heard the voice of her mother who most probably died during a de ath march through the Syrian Desert overseen by Ottoman authorities).“Siro un Gagavik” (“Beautiful Patridge”) An Armenian folksong.About the augmente d acoustic piano:By using an optical sensor that tracks the movement of pi ano keys, I am able to reveal sounds I have recorded as well as manipulat e a flexible software simulation of an acoustic piano. In this way, I can augment and extend the sound range of the piano while maintaining the phy sical relationship that exists between piano and pianist.I consider the in strument I perform on a self-portrait. It holds my ancestral past (recordi ngs of Armenian folkloric instruments), present (a recent field recording and voices of close friends) and an unknown future (explorative use of AI to “speak” the unspeakable by inverting my voice into piano).I am deeply grateful to the Jackman Humanities Institute and the Faculty of Music for inviting me to go on this personal artistic journey.Thank you to:Jackman H umanities Institute Staff and Fellows for your inspiration and support Fac ulty of Music, University of Toronto Alison Keith Robin Elliott Kimberley Yates Marie-Josée Chartier and Linda Catlin Smith (voices) Musicians from the Naregatsi Orchestra (folkloric instrumentalists) Ara Dinkjian Patrice Coulombe David Rokeby Gavin Fraser Denis Martin and his graduate class Je remie Boudreau Yuval Hakak Amanda Tschanz Katharine Rankin Dmytro Kyryliv Gascia Ouzounian Gerard Gormley Araxie Altounian Lena Ouzounian Meri Musin yan \n\nSponsors \nJackman Humanities Institute, Faculty of Music \n80 Qu eens Park, Toronto, ON M5S 2C5 \n\nCategories \n JHI EventPerformance \n \nAudiences \n All DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20260312T121000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20260312T130000 LAST-MODIFIED:20260205T125002Z LOCATION:80 Queens Park, Toronto, ON M5S 2C5 SUMMARY:In Stone: World Première of Eve Egoyan's New Composition for Augmen ted Acoustic Piano URL;TYPE=URI:https://www.humanities.utoronto.ca/events/in-stone-world-premi ere END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR