In Stone: World Première of Eve Egoyan's New Composition for Augmented Acoustic Piano

Join us for the free world premiere of In Stone, a concert by composer Eve Egoyan, JHI’s 2025–26 Artist in Residence, presented as part of the Thursdays at Noon series. Written for augmented acoustic piano in response to the JHI theme Dystopia and Trust, In Stone reflects on the Armenian Genocide and the ongoing struggle to hold truth amid denial, drawing on Armenian sacred and folk music, field recordings, and the natural world as witness. The Thursdays at Noon series is made possible in part by the Jay Telfer Forum Endowment Fund.

Livestream will be available on the Faculty of Music YouTube channel.

About Eve Egoyan

Eve Egoyan is an internationally active Canadian pianist and composer of Armenian heritage. She was trained in the classical piano repertoire in Canada, England, and Germany, and completed an MMus degree at the University of Toronto in 1992. She has released over a dozen solo CDs concentrating on contemporary repertoire by Canadian and international composers, including many works commissioned for her. During the past 15 years, Egoyan has explored the use of cutting-edge technology to expand the expressive possibilities of the acoustic piano and incorporate real-time audio and visual effects into live performance. More recently, she has been researching and performing music by Armenian composers.

Program Note

“In Stone” is a new work for augmented acoustic piano reflecting on the Armenian Genocide. I am honoured to have been selected as Artist-in-Residence at the Jackman Humanities Institute in partnership with the Faculty of Music. “In Stone” has been composed in response to Jackman Humanities Institute’s annual theme "Dystopia and Trust".

From 1915 to 1923, more than 1.5 million Armenians were killed, and half a million survivors were exiled by the Ottoman Empire. The widespread violence, forced deportations, starvation, and mass killings inflicted upon the Armenian population, which still remains unacknowledged by its perpetrators and successor states, became a template for subsequent genocides.

Armenians around the world hold within themselves resonances from this violent past. It is an agonizing reality for Armenians today that the genocide has been interpreted differently by its perpetrators. Living with a distorted past raises the haunting question, who then is entrusted 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 forces.

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 Azerbaijan.

How can I as an artist express this unspeakable past in this equally distressing present moment?

My ancestors live deeply in my soul. “In Stone” is an attempt to sing their song amidst the plethora of human songs that need to be heard in our time. Nature herself is singing loudly to us through 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 songs, and folkloric instruments. The songs and hymns are fragmented to express a feeling of both presence and loss. The meandering feeling of the compositional form echoes the wandering tradition of troubadour story-telling.

On Armenian ancestral lands there remain hand-carved stones including Khachkar, our crosses, and remnants of our stone churches amongst other stones. Through carved inscriptions and images they literally hold the Armenian language and artistic imagination within them, carrying our words, our prayers, our essence, held ”In stone” through time past to time present and into the future. 

These stone remains are scattered across the landscape like diasporic Armenians are scattered across the world. Gardens and orchards planted by Armenians on the historical land of Western Armenia remain. Stones, plants, birds, sky, water - they bear witness.

The title of my work, “In Stone”, refers to stones on ancient land holding resonances of the past, the past both human and non-human. I trust in nature as witness and guardian of the truth.

Detailed musical references:

While in Yerevan, Armenia, I recorded folk musicians from the Naregatsi Orchestra performing on folk instruments. Recordings of the wind instruments Shvi (high wooden flute) and Blul (shepherd’s flute) are used to echo the sound of birdsong; Kanun (large plucked zither instrument) glissandi runs reference water. I also use recordings of Qamancha (bowed string instrument), Duduk (double-reed woodwind instrument), Santur (hammered dulcimer), Tar (lute) and a field recording of Armenian birdsong taken while hiking the Khosrov Forest State Nature Reserve, Armenia, with my family.

Compositional fragments from the following Armenian spiritual and folk music sources:

"Zarmanali e Indz” (“It is Wonderous to me”)
Written by 8th-century Armenian hymnographer and poet Khosrovidukht who is one of the earliest, perhaps even the earliest, women composer, whose music survives to this day.

”Havun Havun" (“To the Bird”- alluding to the Holy Ghost)
One of the oldest known Armenian sacred hymns. Attributed to Grigor Narekatsi from the10th-century.

“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 dreaming she heard the voice of her mother who most probably died during a death march through the Syrian Desert overseen by Ottoman authorities).

“Siroun Gagavik” (“Beautiful Patridge”)
An Armenian folksong.

About the augmented acoustic piano:

By using an optical sensor that tracks the movement of piano keys, I am able to reveal sounds I have recorded as well as manipulate 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 physical relationship that exists between piano and pianist.

I consider the instrument I perform on a self-portrait. It holds my ancestral past (recordings 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 Humanities Institute Staff and Fellows for your inspiration and support
Faculty 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
Jeremie Boudreau
Yuval Hakak
Amanda Tschanz
Katharine Rankin
Dmytro Kyryliv
Gascia Ouzounian
Gerard Gormley
Araxie Altounian
Lena Ouzounian
Meri Musinyan