Blog Posts

Friendly Exchanges: Musicworks Fall 2015

The title of this post is borrowed from Toronto percussionist Germaine Liu. You’ll have to read Mary Dickie’s lovely story in the Fall 2015 issue to see how Germaine uses the[...] Read more

Jennie Punter

Beautiful Contraptions

On a breezy afternoon in early May, I met composer Allison Cameron and photographer Claire Harvie in the cheery little garden oasis behind Trinity St. Paul’s[...] Read more

Jennie Punter

Musicworks' Summer 2015 issue (#122)

Settle into your porch swing, deck chair, or beach blanket, then dig in to our Summer 2015 issue. Read, listen, and don't forget to look! Eye-catching images (including original photography[...] Read more

The Joy of Discovery

When I was working at the Kingston Whig-Standard in late 1980s, when the daily was still independently owned, I would make my way up the city’s main drag at least once a week for some[...] Read more

Jennie Punter

Play Your Piano

For twenty years I’ve been roommates with a mahogany-stained Heintzman upright piano that has been in my family for five decades. I’ve played numerous black Yamaha uprights and Steinway grands;[...] Read more

Jennie Punter

The Intimacy of Summer Listening

One Friday evening in early May, I jumped on my bicycle and dipsy-doodled to the Music Gallery along Toronto’s pothole-ravaged streets. Musician–producer Radwan Ghazi Moumneh was premiering a new[...] Read more

Jennie Punter

What is an instrument?

One late November day last year, during a family visit to Amsterdam, I stepped out after dinner and took the tram to Oostenburg, a former harbour hub near the city centre and now being redeveloped[...] Read more

Jennie Punter

Community Muse

As I approach the finish line of my first issue as editor of Musicworks, I am keenly aware of the sonic geography that surrounds me. Pharoah Sanders’ Message From Home is playing[...] Read more

Jennie Punter

True Confessions Of A Church-goer

That’s me in the spotlight . . . or, more accurately, that’s me in the third pew, left of centre aisle. In the photograph, I am the small mass of auburn hair lit up by the white glare of the big[...] Read more

Jennie Punter

In Praise Of Spectacle

It’s October, and that means that Torontonians have just survived another annual, all-night, bacchanalian, contemporary-art binge called Nuit Blanche. Once a year, on the last Saturday in[...] Read more

Micheline Roi

Change Is Coming, You Can Hear It In The Streets

On a recent trip to Montreal I encountered one of the most exciting pieces of new music I had heard in a long time. The sound came quietly at first, a distant pointillistic, tinny gesture.[...] Read more

Micheline Roi

From Totalitarianism To Democracy: Wonderful Bad Taste Comes To Experimental Music

Good taste is totalitarian. The art critics, curators, and editors that create taste’s laws also enact those laws; their opinions influence what gets seen and read by the audience. Experimental[...] Read more...

Micheline Roi