IN CONCERT

What: Eve Egoyan, Simple Lines of Enquiry

When: Sunday, 8 p.m.

Where: Alix Goolden Hall

Tickets: $20 general, $15 students/members. Available at Open Space, 250-383-8833 or at the door.

Music is a living thing for contemporary pianist Eve Egoyan.

The Victoria-born musician, a star in the Canadian new-music scene, has been approached by composers from around the world who hope she'll bring their visions to life. Contemporary composers from John Abram to James Tenney have imagined works with Egoyan in mind, but the pianist says the ones that grab her attention are those that explore new territories of sound.

"If someone makes me hear the piano in a way that I've never imagined before, then I'll want to pursue it," the 47-year-old said on the phone from Vancouver, where she was taking a walk in Pacific Spirit Regional Park. "It's about the advancement of piano literature and how we hear it. That is my passion, the instrument itself."

After a neighbour introduced her to the piano as a child, Egoyan - sister of Oscar-nominated filmmaker Atom and daughter of painter Joseph and designer Sushan Egoyan of Ego Interiors - enrolled in classes, studying standard repertoire at the Victoria Conservatory of Music and later at the University of Victoria.

She has since performed across North America and Europe and released six critically acclaimed discs of works by living composers and one by Erik Satie.

She began interpreting new works after she moved to Toronto, around 1994, when she performed a solo recital of some of the contemporary pieces she had loved in Victoria, along with some by Victoria composers who had moved to Toronto, too.

"That was definitely a turning point," said Egoyan.

"That one recital made me feel free creatively in a way, and much closer to the creative sources because I was working with living composers."

It was a refreshing change from performing music by Beethoven. Not knowing how his piano would have sounded, what his performance space was like or how his works were edited makes interpretation a frustrating process.

"There's always this feeling that you're trying to be true to a source you'll never know," Egoyan said.

In contemporary music, not only are the composers typically living, so is their music.

"It's still a movement," said the Toronto resident, "because the music is changing for the composer as you're working on it."

Following a performance Saturday at ArtSpring on Saltspring Island, Egoyan will play Simple Lines of Enquiry at Alix Goolden Hall, a piece that renowned Canadian composer Ann Southam created for her before her death. In addition to a 2009 recording of that piece, Egoyan's latest album, Returnings (released Dec. 2), represents the complete works for solo piano that Southam wrote with Egoyan in mind.

Egoyan and Southam, who died at 73 in November 2010, formed a strong friendship through years of professional collaboration.

The first Christmas after Egoyan's only daughter, Viva, was born in 2004, Southam arrived with a folder.

"On it, it said, 'a little quiet music for Viva Anoush Egoyan Rokeby.' And in that little folder were four movements for what was going to be Simple Lines of Enquiry," she said.

Though she completed the hour-long piece in 2007, Southam continued tinkering with it through the recording, as she heard Egoyan's interpretation.

The recording has garnered high praise, including a spot in New Yorker magazine's top 10 discs of 2009, compiled by Alex Ross, who wrote that he couldn't stop listening to the "immense, mysterious piano piece."

Egoyan still plays it for seven-year-old Viva - who shared a taste for tapioca and macaroni with Southam - when she has trouble sleeping.

Given the quiet tone of the piece and its length, Egoyan said if audience members need to move, they're welcome to do that quietly. It's not a traditionally dramatic piece, except in its beauty, she said.

"The piece is so much about listening to the decay," she said, likening its parts to blending of different colours. "It is a unique piece of piano literature and it's exquisite."

asmart@timescolonist.com