Anna Pidgorna
Ludovico Ensemble
TRACKS
- What Else Can I Give Him? | Що ще йому дати? (9:46)
- First Meditation | Перша медитація (3:40)
- Teach Your Daughters | Навучайте дочок (10:29)
- Drown in the Depth | Та й в глибині втону (10:46)
- Second Meditation | Друга Медитація (3:32)
- Walk Under the Moon | Погуляй під місяцем (9:48)
PERFORMERS:
Voice: Anna Pidgorna (tracks 1, 3, 4, 6)
Instruments: Ludovico Ensemble
Violin: Gabriela Diaz (tracks 1, 3, 4, 6)
Cello: Leo Eguchi (tracks 2, 4, 5, 6)
Double Bass: Evan Runyon (tracks 1, 4, 6)
Cimbalom: Nicholas Tolle (tracks 1, 2, 5, 6)
Piano: Yoko Hagino (tracks 2, 3, 5, 6)
Percussion: Mike Williams (tracks 1, 4, 6)
Body percussion: Nicholas Tolle (track 3)
Invented Folksongs is available from:
CREDITS:
Music and poetry by Anna Pidgorna
Produced by Pascal Le Boeuf and Anna Pidgorna
Edited by Pascal Le Boeuf
Instruments recorded by John Weston
Vocals recorded by Jon Estes
Mixed by Pouya Hamidi
Artwork by Olha Kriuchkovska
Graphic design by Roksolana Uhryniuk
Poetry translation by Anna Pidgorna
Instruments recorded at Futura Productions, Boston, MA, USA in November 2021. Vocals recorded at Jon Estes Studio, Nashville, TN, USA in December 2021. Recording and album production generously funded by Canada Council for the Arts and FACTOR Canada. This publication is made possible in part by the Barr Ferree Foundation Fund for Publications, Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University.
TK557 © 2025 Anna Pidgorna
‘Folk music’ is an interesting piece of terminology because of how slippery it can be. The debut full-length of greater Vancouver-based composer and vocalist Anna Pidgorna, Invented Folksongs, probes this contradiction through the lens of her Ukrainian heritage. Pidgorna has long incorporated musical elements that reflect her ancestry in her concert works but since visiting and studying traditional music in Ukraine, her work has aimed for a more embodied understanding of these traditions. Especially since these trips ignited her interest in singing her own work. Pidgorna has ultimately found a deeply personal approach to vocalization, drawing on Ukrainian folk, but pushing these gestures past their traditional origins, while blending them with classical and contemporary singing techniques.
Her idiosyncratic singing matches her compositional outlook. Invented Folksongs (composed from 2015-18) consists of four songs ranging from nine to eleven minutes based on texts by Pidgorna herself plus two shorter intervening instrumental “meditations.” Pidgorna’s bold, sonorous voice is accompanied by members of the Ludovico Ensemble, whose present incarnation employs percussion, cimbalom, prepared piano, violin, cello, bass, each of which has an analogous instrument in Ukrainian traditions.
The result isn’t easily classified and this is the music’s strength. It’s neither contemporary music peppered with folk tropes, nor folk with fancied-up arrangements. Instead, Pidgorna manages a thorough and thoughtful hybrid of the sounds, shape and ethos of these two worlds, where neither genre feels like the dominant one. Even her lyrics are built from folkloric imagery, yet portray stories rooted in contemporary feminist subject matter— antiquated gendered pressures in society, queer female sexuality, as well as the bleak true story of Oksana Makar, which Pidgorna has woven throughout a popular folk song on “Teach Your Daughters.”
The album’s illustrator Olha Kriuchkovskav mirrors these themes in her images. She also hails from Pidgorna’s own hometown of Kherson, and had to flee the Russian occupation in 2022. Meanwhile designer Roksolana Uhryniuk extends the red vein-like lines found in Kriuchkovska’s images, reflecting the music and poetry’s vulnerable intensity.
Invented Folksongs is as powerful as it is imaginative, especially in the era of Putin’s ongoing military encroachment on Ukraine. Exploring diasporic identity through the bending of traditional musical materials, it also makes an articulate case for the notion, as Pidgorna states that “folk traditions are not museum pieces, they are living, breathing practices that are constantly morphing and reinventing themselves in response to their time and circumstances.”
Anna Pidgorna (b. 1985) is a composer, vocalist and multi-media artist who combines sound, visual arts, theatre and writing in her work. She was born in Kherson, Ukraine and immigrated to Canada as a pre-teen. She is strongly influenced by Ukraine’s folk music, incorporating elements of this tradition into her vocal practice and instrumental composition. She is particularly interested in opera, theatrical forms, ritual and vocal composition as a whole.
With funding from Canada Council for the Arts, Pidgorna travelled through rural Ukraine to record local singing practices in 2012 and 2013. This research has culminated in numerous instrumental works such as Weeping, Like Doves With Grey Wings Embracing, Another Meditation on an Invented Folksong, Fanfare, Bridal Train and Lesya’s Song, as well as vocal works such as Invented Folksongs, A Soul’s Keening for Her Beloved and Weeping for a Dead Love. Her EP Starlit Sky, released on the label I Shall Sing Until My Land Is Free in 2023, features folk-like settings of Lesya Ukrainka’s poetry. She is experimenting with devised theatre in collaboration with a group of Ukrainian artists through the project Lamenting for Ukraine, a ritualized theatrical performance inspired by Ukraine’s lamentation tradition.
Pidgorna and her operatic collaborator, writer and librettist Maria Reva, are recipients of the Mécénat Musica Prix 3 Femmes 2020 Award, and have written two operas together. Plaything, developed by Musique 3 Femmes, received its world premiere at UfaFabrik in Berlin in 2022. Our Trudy was commissioned and premiered by the Ad Astra Festival in Russell, Kansas in 2021. The duo are working on their third operatic collaboration exploring contemporary and historic military occupation in Ukraine.
Pidgorna holds two SOCAN Foundation Emerging Composers’ Awards and represented Canada at the ISCM World New Music Days 2013 festival in Vienna. Her work has been commissioned, performed and recorded by soloists, ensembles, presenters and festivals in Canada, USA, Uruguay, Ireland, Scotland, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Greece, Poland, Ukraine and South Korea. Her compositions are featured on Rockeys Duo’s Brocade (Redshift Records, 2017), Marina Thibeault’s Elles (Atma Classique, 2019), Gamin’s Nong (Innova Records, 2020) and Essential Opera’s Mirror, Mirror (Leaf Music, 2021). Pidgorna’s scores are published by Oxingale Music. She holds a PhD from Princeton University, an MMus from the University of Calgary, and a BA from Mount Allison University.
Redshift Records 