DESCRIPTION:
The Governor General Announces announced the appointment of
Christina Petrowska Quilico, C.M.,OOnt,FRSC
Toronto, Ontario to the Order of Canada “For her celebrated career as a classical and contemporary pianist, and for championing Canadian music.” The Order of Canada is one of our country’s highest civilian honours. It was the latest recognition for a lifetime devoted to her art. She received the 2007 Friends of Canadian Music Award from the Canadian Music Centre (CMC) and Canadian League of Composers, and in 2009 was selected as one of the CMC’s Ambassadors of Canadian music. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation named her one of “20 Can’t-Miss Classical Pianists” one of “Canada’s 25 best classical pianists”. In 2021, she was added to CBC Radio’s “In Concert Hall of Fame”, celebrating the greatest Canadian classical musicians of all time, past and present and inducted as a Fellow into the Royal Society of Canada.
The Ottawa-born pianist was only 10 in her orchestral debut, playing the Haydn D major concerto with Toronto’s Conservatory Orchestra. At 14, co-winning a concerto competition along with Murray Perahia, she played Mozart’s K.488 in New York. The Times hailed her as a “promethean talent”, and in subsequent solo recitals as “an extraordinary talent with phenomenal ability...dazzling virtuosity”, playing “to perfection”. She studied at Juilliard and went on to doctoral studies in Musicology in Paris at the Sorbonne She has appeared in recital in Carnegie, Alice Tully and Merkin halls,Middle East, France, Germany, Greece, England and Ukraine and with most of Canada’s leading orchestras and the symphony orchestras of Greek Radio and Taipei.
She has premiered well over 200 works. By 2019, she had performed 45 concertos, 24 of them contemporary. That year alone, she played three Canadian concertos –André Mathieu’s Fourth (Ontario premiere), Larysa Kuzmenko’s First, and the world premiere of Kuzmenko’s duo concerto Skartaris, written for her (with Sinfonia Toronto, Maestro Nurhan Arman and violinist Marc Djokic). Recent years have seen Petrowska Quilico appear in the Montreal series Société́ de musique contemporaine du Québec, and Innovations en concert; at the Frederic Rzewski Festival in New York, and on-stage playing Ann Southam’s music in Toronto Dance Theatre’s production, Rivers.
In recorded output, few artists can match Petrowska Quilico, particularly in the music of her time. Among her 50 plus CDs are eight Canadian piano concertos on five albums; and solo and chamber works by contemporary Canadian and international composers. Three feature the music of her first husband, Montreal composer Michel- Georges Brégent. She has also recorded four CDs and toured extensively with her second husband Louis Quilico, the legendary Metropolitan Opera baritone. Four of her CDs of Canadian music have earned JUNO Awards nominations, three of them for concerto CDs, and one for Glass Houses Revisited. This last is one of her five titles (seven actual CDs) devoted to the music of the late Canadian composer Ann Southam, with whom her name is almost synonymous. Among Centrediscs’ all-time best sellers, the CD in 2014 was named one of “30 best Canadian classical recordings ever” by CBC Music. Her Global Sirens CD is entirely devoted to women composers. Some of her more recent CDs bear her paintings as covers.
She continues to be sought after performer of contemporary music as well as traditional classical music. She is currently editing four CDs in her latest Mozart series. Two CDs released in this series have received rave reviews including one from the American Record Guide (March/April 2018): “This is how music should be played. There is a feeling of freedom and ebullience in these performances that I attribute mainly to the wonderful Quilico, and she is one of the most satisfying pianists I have heard in this music.” She is booked for two performances of the Tan Dun piano concerto with the Kindred Spirits Symphony Orchestra (2020/2021 season). She will be recording three Canadian piano concertos by Christos Hatzis, Larysa Kuzmenko and Alice Ping Yee Ho with Sinfonia Toronto and Marc Djokic, violin. She also plans to record a new CD devoted to piano music by Alice Ping Yee Ho.

HD Video Production: info at inspireinc cøm

Assembly and post-production of sound, by David Jaeger
http://theCanadianEncyclopedia.com/articles/emc/david-jaeger

Additional cinematography and time-lapse sequence
by Paul Cormack, http://visuality.ca

RED Epic super-slow-motion and super-wide-angle footage by Ian Sun,
Anansi Moving Images https://www.youtube.com/user/broAnansi/videos

Up Close and Personal camera on Christina's face,
by Roman Milo, http://fugitive-glue.com

Many thanks to Jobert Sevellino for additional footage of Maestro Kristian Alexander


http://KSOrchestra.ca

http://ChristinaPetrowskaQuilico.com



* from "Grieg Piano Concerto" http://owl.li/cQdpJ

† from "Grieg's music in popular culture" http://owl.li/bZraR