Longer bio:

Described as “suggestive, elegant” and “hauntingly beautiful,” Anna’s music seeks tactile encounters with the world, extending through memory, history, and landscape. Her works have been performed across Canada and in the U.K., China, Mexico, Italy, and Russia. In 2021, her piano work Harbour, performed and recorded by Cheryl Duvall, received a JUNO nomination for Classical Composition of the Year.

Recent 2025 collaborative projects include the premiere of Saltwater, a string orchestra piece for the Victoria Symphony, and Cells of Wind, a graphically notated chamber opera shaped by breath, gesture, and interwoven fragments. Created with Montreal poet and translator Oana Avasilichioaei and the two-time Dora Award–nominated experimental opera collective FAWN, the work draws on the life of Romanian theatre artist, Lena Constante. Earlier dramatic work includes a one-act opera on dementia, with an original libretto by P.K. Page, performed and broadcast by CBC Radio during her tenure as composer-in-residence with the Victoria Symphony (2005–08).

Anna’s residency projects have taken her from the Matralab at Concordia (Montreal) to Artspring (Saltspring Island, BC) to Outvert Artspace (Ísafjörður, Iceland), with each experience deepening her interest in the philosophy of embodiment within the natural world. This winter, she will join visual artist Ella Morton and pianist Cheryl Duvall at Artshed in Sointula where they will be developing a hybrid audio-visual project based on this theme.

Her catalogue includes commissions from Heather Roche, the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Amy Horvey, Quatuor Bozzini, Red Shift Ensemble, Cheryl Duvall, Thin Edge New Music Collective, and Continuum Contemporary Ensemble, among others. Recent premieres include: Saltwater (Victoria Symphony), piano solos Woolgathering and Entangle (Wesley Shen), and flute solo Blended Airs (Mark McGregor).

Alongside her compositional work, she is co-founder and pianist-composer of Soft Time, a Victoria-based improvising collective with Kristy Farkas, Cathy Fern Lewis, and Mitch Renaud. The ensemble works with spaciousness, deep listening, and resonance, occasionally detouring into four-part madrigals on melodica.

Anna studied piano with Arthur Rowe and composition with Christopher Butterfield and John Celona at the University of Victoria where she earned a BMus in Theory and Composition and an MMus in Composition. Further studies in Toronto followed with James Rolfe and Gary Kulesha in composition, and with Eve Egoyan in piano. She received a Doctorate of Musical Arts from the University of Toronto in 2013, supported by a Joseph-Armand Bombardier scholarship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Her doctoral research focused on the chamber works of experimental Toronto composer Martin Arnold.

Anna teaches from her downtown studio in Victoria. Her scores can be found at the Canadian Music Centre, where she is an associate composer.