Southam: Rivers.

SOUTHAM: Rivers Christina Petrowska Quilico, p Centrediscs 10505 [3CD] 164 minutes

How do you describe a minimalist piece? Simply, I suppose, since it uses a small amount of actual musical material and subjects it to a process that lasts a long time. Since minimalism came about as an alternative to modernism, it often involves pleasant sonorities. Some minimalism is fast and insistent, some is slow and meditative, and some lies in between with fast notes, gentle articulations, and a slow process. As heard in Rivers, that's the kind of minimalism Ann Southam writes.

Ms Southam (b 1937, Winnipeg) is the latest Canadian composer to be the subject of a …