“Our verdict is in: This was the year’s best music”
“So different from the joyful minimalism of her earlier music, the late Ann Southam’s final works for piano, written for Eve Egoyan, are spare and haunting, inhabiting a circumscribed world where the expressive resonance of even the simplest musical element is questioned, and where resolution is always possible but rarely permanent.”
— Elissa Poole, The Globe and Mail

“It was clear that this is an extraordinarily lucid, penetrating pianist, with exquisite touch, total accuracy... she ́s a joy to watch and listen to, in short.”
— UW Gazette

Egoyan’s take on new works is stunning…Egoyan’s remarkable playing balanced that delicacy with intense focus, holding all in a net…the spaces in between the notes were still charged with presence…I even found myself confusing sound with touch…so convincingly had Egoyan restitched our reference points. – The Globe and Mail

“Egoyan brings her unerring sensibility and majestic equilibrium to a piece that demands a rare emotional resilience in order to capture its unrelenting weave of sense and sensuality.”
— Musical Toronto

“Egoyan created a program that reminded me of something I’d read about visual artists, who in some respects refine our sense of sight, teaching us to discriminate and discern in ways that we had not been able before. The artist changes the way we see. Same with Egoyan and our hearing.”
— barczablog

“What makes Egoyan an artist to die for is her devotion to new music. She specializes in the unfamiliar, but plays it so revealingly we come away from her recitals still wondering at the poetry she reveals in what can sound desiccated and dull… Her mind is all quicksilver in its lightness and leaping alertness… brilliantly clear and perceptive.” – Halifax Chronicle-Herald

“A performer whose powers of listening cast a hypnotic spell over her audiences, opening their ears and hearts… What’s Egoyan´s secret? Meticulous preparation. Discerning choice of repertoire-she only plays music she loves…an innate love for piano sonorities and texture. Abundant technique that never advertises itself. A passionate desire to get under the skin of the music she plays… and Egoyan´s magical quality of listening…” – National Post

“Egoyan is the kind of pianist who excites the listener because of the total involvement she displays with whatever music she perform... She is one with her instrument and at the same time she is one with the music. Hers is an extraordinary talent.” – Lancette Journal of the Arts

“AN IMPECCABLE SOLO RECITAL BY EVE EGOYAN THAT EXCELS IN EVERY POSSIBLE WAY” – Gramophone Magazine

“In the hands of a committed interpreter such as Eve Egoyan, [the music] becomes a pathway to the unconscious” – The Globe and Mail

“Eve Egoyan’s pianism has strengths in abundance, fully justifying Michael Finnissy’s testimony that ‘she illuminates the music she plays; an alchemy, authenticity and fearlessness’.” – International Piano Magazine

“Such a diversity of approaches enables Egoyan to display the rich variety and depth of her performance technique. The works demand virtuosity of extremely different sorts. In some cases, it is the capacity to play music with fast, complex passages. In others, it may involve the ability to sustain extraordinary delicacy and quiet over a long span. Many shadings in between these extremes are explored as well. In all cases, the pianist shows herself a sensitive listener as well as performer, having obviously internalized the works so that she can perform them almost as if they were her own.” — Fanfare

“The stripped down nature of Wu draws the listener’s attention to every subtle nuance of Egoyan’s playing. It abundantly clear why she’s sought after by composers from around the world, you can feel the passion that went into every note of the recording... Egoyan’s carefully restrained playing brings a sense of awe- inspiring beauty to the piece, proving that you can often achieve the best results by taking a simple approach to music.”

— Sceneandheard.ca

“With grace and intensity in equal measure, Canadian pianist Eve Egoyan seems incapable of an unmellifluous gesture.” – Opus Magazine

“Egoyan is truly an astounding performer.” – I care if you listen

This was a wonderful performance, in a recital that, like the music, will resonate in the memory. A salutary reminder of how modern piano music can be so deeply affecting.”
– Edmonton Journal

“[Eve Egoyan] draws out intense, difficult beauty... in the hands of a committed interpreter such as Eve Egoyan, [the music] becomes a pathway to the unconscious... The intensity of Egoyan ́s focus pulled the listener into a claustrophobic inner world, holding us within a net of promise that evaporated only as the final notes died away.”

— The Globe and Mail

“Egoyan is a visionary musician and pianist who is forging a new path for contemporary solo piano music.” – The Kitchener-Waterloo Record

Pianist Eve Egoyan is a composer´s dream. The largeness of her spirit informs everything she plays with its sensitivity to the tiniest nuance, and her perceptive ability to make strange and unheard-of detail fit together in the most convincing way.  – Halifax Chronicle-Herald

“A performer whose powers of listening cast a hypnotic spell over her audiences, opening their ears and hearts” – The National Post

“The test of a great recording is whether you find yourself temporarily unable to live without it. For certain overlapping periods this year, I couldn’t stop listening to…Ann Southam’s immense, mysterious piano piece Simple Lines of Enquiry.” – Alex Ross, The New Yorker

“A player of incredible, often very quiet intensity.” – The Wire

“Egoyan’s playing was if anything more virtuosic, yet coming from a surprisingly still and calm player. I felt she was in a zone, very tranquil and still even when the music was frenetic. If good playing is understood as the transmission of body dynamics to the efficient and elegant creation of sound, this was like a master class, her body balletic in its smooth transfer of energy to the keys.”

— barczablog

“Two piano pieces from American composer Linda Catlin Smith, beautifully played by Eve Egoyan, showed how much undiscovered richness still lurks within the familiar grand piano when it’s played in the time-honoured way at the keyboard... The familiar and the strange joined hands, in a beautiful and unsettling way.”
– The Telegraph

“Egoyan’s take on new works is stunning…her clear, uncompromising taste was much in evidence in the choice of repertoire…Egoyan’s remarkable playing balanced that delicacy with intense focus, holding all in a net…the spaces in between the notes were still charged with presence…I even found myself confusing sound with touch…so convincingly had Egoyan restitched our reference points.” – Globe and Mail

“Egoyan, so at home in a challenging aesthetic, performs it with the same integrity and intensity that a mystic brings to her prayers.”
— Globe and Mail

“curatorial attention to concept and detail that is so apparent in every Egoyan recital…ears made newly patient by Egoyan’s precise, elegant and highly sympathetic performance” – Globe and Mail

“Eve Egoyan’s pianism has strengths in abundance, fully justifying Michael Finnissy’s testimony that ‘she illuminates the music she plays; an alchemy, authenticity and fearlessness’.” – International Piano Magazine

“Egoyan’s unflinching offering of an emotional landscape... a questing vision that makes her arguably one of the finest contemporary artists out there today.”

“Egoyan made the time pass so quickly because she held our attention so perfectly. She played the work with an intensity that was seductive... Egoyan is the kind of committed, bold artist of every composer’s dreams.”
— Globe and Mail

2009: Ten Exceptional Recordings “The test of a great recording is whether you find yourself temporarily unable to live without it. For certain overlapping periods this year, I couldn’t stop listening to…Ann Southam’s immense, mysterious piano piece Simple Lines of Enquiry.” – The New Yorker 

“The recital featured not only flashy and virtuosic passages (for which she is overly qualified), but also soft and delicate melodic lines, which were each placed with the utmost care and attention. Egoyan is truly an astounding performer.”
— I care if you listen

“Egoyan’s performance, which shares the multi-dimensional ranges and resonances of the music in exhilarating ways, seems to magically travel through the under-layers of our skin, gently leaving its imprint on our souls.” – Doina Popescu

“Refreshing, innovative, creative and original.” – Sound Advice, CBC Radio

“Egoyan is a visionary musician and pianist who is forging a new path for contemporary solo piano music... She has an exceptional command of the piano and a completely solid understanding of the music. Most remarkably, she has a unique ability to interact with and engage the audience, taking them places one never would have dreamed were accessible through music.”

— The Kitchener-Waterloo Record