Director Statement

I’ve known Eve for more than twenty years. Our collaboration for this project began when I received a brief email from Eve, subject heading: short film?  She was about to embark on year long process of developing a program of work by five composers, as well as create a new piece of her own.

The first time we sat down there was no camera, simply an audio tape recorder. What emerged was a person whose self and art were so deeply intertwined it was hard to decipher where one stopped and the other began.

Eve expressed the need to erase the act of musical interpretation and the imprint of composers she carried in her body. She shared her need to find an original voice, so much so she was literally re-inventing the piano (via the use of a Disklavier — an acoustic piano with an electronic interface) and the actual musical notation used to record her compositions.

Eve has practiced almost every day of her life since she was a child. She has a dedicated and loving family yet a complex and conflicted relationship to her past. Her talents won her scholarships. She studied at the most prestigious institutes abroad, yet was robbed of a diploma when she confronted the power and predatory behaviour that can exist in the private piano room.

We filmed for a period of a year. We talked. We documented rehearsals. We worked at Eve’s studio and in her home. My initial goal was to combine vérité style reality-based filming and cinematic vignettes. The aim was to capture moments that would reveal a side of the artist and the artistry normally hidden from view. This did indeed happen, yet so much more began to emerge.

The “show” Eve developed would disrupt any expectation that a pianist walks on stage sits down and plays. The compositions involved glitched film projection (Nicole Lizée) extended musical moments (John Oswald), whispered vocalizations (Linda Catlin-Smith), and performing in the theatrical sense of the word.

This is where it gets interesting. Egoyan is an intensely private person, she does not naturally take to the stage, she is a reluctant performer, she doesn’t like technology. Her new work involved an extraordinary push outside her comfort zone. Throughout rehearsals she teetered on the knife edge of vulnerability and virtuosity with a ferocious desire to create. She openly developed an intense trust with her collaborators who created the show with her, namely dramaturge Joanne McIntyre, technical producer Phil Strong, set and costume designer Cheryl Lalonde, lighting designer Simon Rossiter as well as the documentary film crew and myself.

The title of the film “Duet for Solo Piano” is taken from the title of Eve’s composition that she developed during the course of filming.  By using a Disklavier, Eve created a “ghost” piano – a kind of dialogue between the real piano and its virtual self.  It is also here, in the space between what a piano can do and what she wished it could do, Eve truly finds her voice.

What I learned in my journey to represent another, was that to know Eve, to understand her, was to meet her in the place where she is her most intimate self. The piano is her landscape, her safe place, her true home. Paradoxically when she is inside her music, she is truly revealed.

I am grateful to my key collaborates, Cinematographer John Price, editor Caroline Christie and sound designer Phil Strong. These people are incredible artists in their own right to whom I am deeply indebted.

Su Rynard