I know I’m a little late on this, but it’s been busy! My 2013 had a fantastically overloaded ending. Here’s a summary of my year:

1. Finished my opera On the eve of Ivan Kupalo in early January. It was premiered in late January at the Happening Festival in Calgary. It was like delivery a baby I had been carrying for 3.5 years.

2. Also in January, I went to the Banff Centre for three weeks.

3. In February, Thin Edge New Music Collective toured my piece Bridal Train through Banff, Vancouver, Victoria, Toronto and Montreal. They performed it again in Italy in the summer.

4. In April, I defended my thesis and finally graduated. Yey!

5. In May, I travelled to Toronto for the Soundstreams Emerging Composers’ Workshop, where I got to work with the Gryphon Trio, R. Murray Schafer and Juliet Palmer. Had a great time.

6. In August, I spent 4 weeks in France, Spain and Italy with my lovely boyfriend. Yey! Had my purse and passport stolen in Barcelona. Boo.

7. In the summer, I won some SOCAN awards.

8. Sometime in the fall, excerpts of The Child appeared in the arts journal Manor House Quarterly.

9. At the end of October, I went to Toronto for a few days for Rachel Mercer’s amazing performance of my piece The Child, Bringer of Light presented by New Music Concerts. Did I say it was amazing?

10. Straight from Toronto, I traveled to Kosice, Slovakia for the beginning of the ISCM World New Music Days. About 3.5 days and 8 concerts later, we moved on to Bratislava for more ISCM goodness (4 concerts for me). The highlight of this fair city was meeting Kaija Saariaho again. One of the best parts about the Slovak portion of this festival were all the fantastic student volunteers whose work continued well into the night during tours of the local bar scene. From there, we travelled to Vienna, where my solo accordion piece, Light-play through curtain holes, was performed by Alfred Melichar. It was one of the few pieces containing triadic harmony floating in an ocean of hardcore modernism. In total, I saw approximately 20 concerts in 10 days.

11. To top off my ISCM experience, I also returned back to Bratislava on the last day to see Saariaho’s new arrangement of her opera La Passion de Simone commissioned by the Melos Ethos Festival. It was fantastic. The next day I travelled to Kyiv via Riga. In this 24 hours, I had stepped foot in 4 European capitals (if you count the Riga airport).

12. After the ISCM, I spent three weeks in Ukraine, just as the protests were starting up. I visited a couple of villages with my excellent guide, Iryna, and recorded some great songs.

13. After getting back home in December, I fought very hard to finish the piano trio Toss a flower on the water, which will be premiered by the Gryphon Trio in March as the official wrap-up of the Soundstreams workshop. It was extremely hard for some reason. Then I temporary died over the holidays. Phew!

So far it’s not looking like 2014 will be any less busy. Woo!