HTA Podcast: Requiem for a Lost Building
Toronto’s historic St. Anne’s Church was destroyed by fire, but violinist Anne Lindsay’s new album gives us one last way to experience its glory firsthand.
By Peter Coffman
When St. Anne’s Church in Toronto burned down on June 9th of 2024, we lost one of the country’s most beautiful and historic buildings. We also lost artworks by some of the finest Canadian painters and sculptors of the 20th century. There’s no silver lining here – historically and culturally, it was a tragic and irreplaceable loss.
But there’s one way that we can still experience St. Anne’s Church directly. Often used for concerts, the building was renowned for its acoustic qualities. And while we can’t see St. Anne’s any more, we can still hear it. Thanks to violinist Anne Lindsay, we can hear it with pristine clarity and precision.
During the COVID-19 lockdown, Anne isolated inside St. Anne’s and recorded a solo violin album. She called it Soloworks 2. She had conceived the album as an instrumental mass for solo violin. By the time it was released in the spring of 2025, It had become a requiem for one of our most important historic buildings.
Every building has a voice. In Soloworks 2, we can still hear the voice of St. Anne’s.
I spoke to Anne about the album, the building, and what it was like to make music in that space. Here’s our conversation:
Anne Lindsay’s album Soloworks 2 is available on CD or by download on Bandcamp.
You can find more background on St. Anne’s Church in this blog – I called it a ‘eulogy’ – that I wrote a few hours after the fire. A conversation I had about the fire with Giacomo Panico on CBC Radio is available here.
Peter Coffman, History & Theory of Architecture program
peter.coffman@carleton.ca
@petercoffman.bsky.social