Musicworks' annual guide to festivals and events is a snapshot of the sonic adventures that will play out in Canadian intersections, fields, and venues this spring and summer. Many of our featured artists, contributors, and staff will be on the scene. We're especially eager to tell you about these six exciting events. Mark your calendars!
Suoni Per Il Popolo
24th Edition
June 12–23, 2024
Montréal, Quebec
A music and arts celebration for the curious, the questioning, the defiant and those still dreaming. Liberate your ears. Free your feet.
Join Suoni Per Il Popolo on their 23rd magic voyage around the sun, helmed by some of the most beautiful and remarkable creative guides.
Suoni Per Il Popolo is a grass-roots, community festival with the vision of using music, arts, and creativity as a force for connection, liberation, community and action. They are focused on the healing power of arts and creative communication.
Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville
May 13–19, 2024
Victoriaville, Quebec
The fortieth edition of the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville will take place May 13 to 19, 2024. The program will include world premieres, world-renowned musicians, visual arts, experimental films and a circuit of sound art installations in public spaces. FIMAV is a true laboratory of all avant-garde art forms. Follow them into a world of audacity and avant-garde!
Pique
June 8, 2024
September 28, 2024
Ottawa, Ontario
Introduced in 2021, Pique is an innovative quarterly festival series by Debaser, with upcoming festival dates on June 8, September 28, December 14, 2024 and March 8, 2025.
Hosted at the Arts Court in downtown Ottawa, a converted heritage courthouse now home to various artistic spaces (art galleries, theatre and dance studios, a cinema and nightclub), Pique takes over the entire building for a multidisciplinary site-specific music and art event that welcomes approximately 1,500 audience members four times per year to discover underground and independent artists and witness innovative and contemporary multi-arts presentation.
Pique is all-ages, pay-what-you-can, thoughtfully-curated and care-oriented. Presentations to look forward to in Pique’s 2024–2025 programming include performances by Alice Longyu Gao, Pelada, Evic Shen, Ahya Simone, Masahiro Takahashi, Indian Giver, Zoma Maduekwe, and many more. Artist submissions are always open for Pique.
Western and World Symposium
June 12–15, 2024
Toronto, Ontario
Western and World is a symposium that challenges the hegemony of Western musical practices through close attention to non-Western traditions. Through a combination of embodied and conceptual practices, our inaugural symposium will feature presentations on hip-hop cosmology; deep listening of Buddhism's relation to contemporary drone music; performances of traditional music forms from Finland and Korea; participatory workshops on singing and playing makam music; and much more.
Headlining performances include an improvised free jazz/poetry set by Fred Moten and Brandon Lopez; Ross Daly's This Tale of Ours Ensemble; and Kelly Thoma's Music Group.
The symposium asks critical questions:
· How are socio-cultural value systems expressed in musical forms?
· In what ways does music play an integral role in processes of decolonization, social justice, and revolutionary change?
· How might we diversify the musical landscape with other musical materials?
· How can we distribute resources to ensure more equitable funding structures and dismantle the primacy of Western classical music?
· What imaginative realities are possible through attunement to non-Western traditions?
Attend the symposium this June at the Music Gallery (918 Bathurst Street).
Sound Symposium XXI
July 16–24, 2024
St. John’s, Newfoundland
Performers, composers, scientists, tinkerers, storytellers, and sound enthusiasts from around the globe come together to participate in a community of innovation and creativity. These nine days and nights are filled with extraordinary music, dance, and theatrical performances, gallery exhibitions, outdoor events, world premieres, pop-up performances, sonic inventions, film screenings, workshops, soundwalks, the Harbour Symphony, and world class classical, contemporary, electronic, improvisational, jazz, and folk music. Join us!
Featured artists for this year’s Symposium include SlowPitchSound, Christina Petrowska Quilico, Duane Andrews, John Kameel Farah and James Hurley, Blackwood with India Gailey, Marianne Trudel and John Hollenbeck: Dédé Java Espiritu, Carmen Braden, Rossy/Daigle, XIA-3, Kathy Kennedy, Ava Koohbor, Natasha Blackwood, Naval Cassidy, Big Space, Parisa Sabet, Rob MacDonald, Snack Witch, SoHo (Joe Sorbara & François Houle), Gregory Oh, Geordie Haley, Louise Moyes Docudance, Jamie Bradbury x The Falling Company, Sarah Joy Stoker and Elling Lien, Brandon Auger, Cassia Streb and Tim Feeney, Shawn Pinchbeck, Erin Donovan, Susanne Chui, Kasey Pocius, David Buley, Gabriel Piller, Joshua Le Gallienne, Nicola Oddy, Persio Dominguez Piantini, Rick Bailey, Corpo Terra, Dimitri Georgaras & Matt Rogalsky, ETA, Gabriela Sanchez Diaz, Lithops Quartet, Nick Hunt, Shahriyar Jamshidi, to unwind a sea shell, Robyn Love, Andrew Gosse, Ben Zendel, and miniheartsbeating…
MUTEK
August 20–25, 2024
Montreal, Quebec
For its twenty-fifth edition, the festival takes place in various emblematic venues, indoors and outdoors. For six days and nights, Montréal will be punctuated by memorable musical and visual performances. For this anniversary edition, MUTEK enriches the experience by installing a free interactive art works exhibition in the heart of the Quartier des spectacles. This exclusive project celebrates the festival's twenty-five-year history of innovation.
Featured artists include Aïsha Devi + }§{, Amnesia Scanner and Freeka Tet, aya, Bored Lord, Cobblestone Jazz, Colin Stetson, Ela Minus, Evian Christ, Factory Floor, Film Scores for No One: a Patrick Watson project, Jacques, Kara-Lis Coverdale, Kode9, Malibu, Marie Davidson, Mathew Jonson, Meuko! Meuko! and NONEYE, Octo Octa, Priori and Jek, Rhyw, Roman Flügel, Steffi, Waajeed, and Zoë McPherson and Alessandra Leone.
Founded in Montréal in 2000, MUTEK is a festival dedicated to electronic music and digital creativity. Focused on discovery and innovation, it showcases an eclectic program featuring more than 100 local and international artists, offering audiences unique immersive experiences and live audiovisual performances.
Alongside the festival, MUTEK Forum brings together artists, researchers, technology professionals, digital experts, and innovators to explore the latest trends in creation, artificial intelligence, extended reality, video games, and sustainability.
Since its inception, MUTEK has gone international and now offers outstanding experiences elsewhere in the world, with editions in Mexico City, Barcelona, Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Santiago, and Dubai.
