Gryphon Gallery: Eve Egoyan

December 16, 2022

Alumni

Stuart Brambley, Archivist Stuart Brambley, Archivist photo

Her parents, Shushan and Joseph settled in Victoria in the 1960s, where they ran a well-known home furnishing/design store on Fort Street. She attended GNS (Norfolk House School) from 1969–1981, always with a cheery smile, rising to head of senior choir and Wymondham House captain. The sister of film director, Atom, she did everything right to fulfil her ambition of becoming a concert pianist.

Eve trained in classical repertoire at the Victoria Conservatory of Music; the University of Victoria with Eva Solar-Kindermanthe; the Banff Centre of Fine Arts with Gyorgy Sebok; the Hochschule der Kunste in West Berlin with Georg Sava; and the Royal Academy of Music in London, England, on a Commonwealth Scholarship with Hamish Milne. She completed her Masters of Music at the University of Toronto on a Chalmers Award with Patricia Parr.

She is an elected Associate of the Royal Academy of Music, London.

She continually re-invents her relationship with her instrument through the creation and commissioning of new works, which she has performed around the world as one of Canada’s primary ambassadors for Canadian music abroad. She is one of 50 Canadian performers and conductors given the designation of “CMC Ambassador” by the Canadian Music Centre.

Eve followed her curiosity into the world of contemporary music since arriving in Toronto 30 years ago, inspired by an emerging generation of Toronto-based composers. She has recorded twelve solo CDs which have received accolades including “Best Classical” The Globe and Mail (1999), one of “Ten Top” classical discs, New Yorker magazine (2009), and “Top Classical Disc of the Year”, The Globe and Mail (2011). Eve received New Chapters funding from the Canada Council in 2017 to develop work where she takes her piano explorations to a new level by augmenting its capacities by combining acoustic piano with new technologies.

She continues to create work for augmented and acoustic piano, and to research music by Armenian composers.