Anna’s compositions seek out tactile encounters with the world while extending into history, memory, and landscape. Performed throughout Canada and internationally, her works have been described as “suggestive, elegant” (Andriessen) and “hauntingly beautiful.” (Barcza) Alongside pieces for the concert stage, she has composed for opera, dance, performance installation, theatre, experimental film and video and documentary. She has held artist residencies at the Matralab (Concordia University, Montréal), Artspring (Saltspring Island) and Outvert Artspace (Ísafjörður, Iceland). Her harpsichord composition Small Meadows in Spring, written for Wesley Shen, was a finalist in the Prix Annelie de Man (Amsterdam, 2020).
“Harbour”, a CD of solo piano works, was recently released by Toronto pianist Cheryl Duvall on Redshift Records (Vancouver) and featured on CBC’s In Concert with Paolo Pietropaolo. Graham Rickson of the ArtsDesk calls pieces like Yellow Bird and “…the sublime Adagio miracles of refined understatement.”
Harbour reached the 2020 year-end playlists of Alex Ross and Timothy Rutherford-Johnson, and was Andy Hamilton’s #1 contemporary classical album for 2020 in U.K.’s The Wire: Adventures in Modern Music. The title track Harbour was nominated for a 2021 Juno Award in the category of Classical Composition of the Year.
The music video for Late Winter (for the Left Hand), recorded by Cheryl Duvall, with art direction by Ella Sharp Morton, was presented at the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow in 2021.
From 2006-2008, Anna was composer-in-residence of the Victoria Symphony. Her opera “What Time is it Now?” based on an original libretto by P.K. Page was premiered by the Victoria Symphony and recorded and broadcast by CBC radio.
Anna’s music has been performed by Brompton String Quartet, Red Shift, Carla Huhtanen, Glenn Gould New Music Ensemble, Cheryl Duvall, Keiko Shichijo, Heather Roche, Mira Benjamin, Standing Wave, FAWN, Thin Edge New Music Collective, Andrea Violet Lodge, Cathy Fern Lewis, Francesca Hurst, Continuum Contemporary Ensemble, Quatuor Bozzini, Victoria and Vancouver Symphonies, Roger Admiral, Moritz Ernst, Wesley Shen, Blythwood Winds, amongst others.
Her compositions have been supported by numerous grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, BC Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, K.M. Hunter Foundation, Koerner Foundation, SOCAN Foundation, and private donors. She has received the K.M. Hunter Award, CMC’s Toronto Emerging Composer Award, and an Ontario Arts Council Chalmers Professional Grant.
In 2013, Anna completed a Doctor of Musical Arts in music composition at the University of Toronto with Gary Kulesha and additional studies with James Rolfe. She holds a Master of Music degree from the University of Victoria, where she studied composition with John Celona, Christopher Butterfield, and Gordon Mumma.
