Fall 2021

issue # 140

Sound notes

The Apperceptive Musical Adventures of Taylor Brook

MICROTONAL DYSTOPIAS

Canadian composer Taylor Brook—whose music can strike an unusual balance between challenge and charm, sometimes with an astonishing delicacy—had been based since 2011 in New York [...]

Read more » Kurt Gottschalk »

Rocío Cano Valiño’s Okno wins first place in Musicworks' 2020 Electronic Music Composition Contest

Okno also wins the Marcelle Deschênes Prize in Electronic Music / Prix Marcelle-Deschênes pour la musique électronique

After following the enigmatic whooshes, dangling creaks, and scene-stealing clunks around the evocative sonic space of Okno, I was not surprised to learn that its composer, Rocío [...]

Read more » Jennie Punter »

Xylem Records: Building Community for Live Coding

The exploratory, collectivist ethos of the U.K. live-coding scene laid the groundwork for Xylem Records, an experimental electronic music netlabel founded by composer and computer scientist Dr [...]

Read more » Griffin Martell »

Features

What's Inside Musicworks 140?

SONIC TENDRILS

The Fall 2021 issue connects you to music artists of distinctive styles and from distant places with expertly crafted words and carefully chosen images. It is accompanied by a CD of deeply felt,[...]

Read more » STAFF »

Reclaiming Chinatown

For music artists Parker Mah and respectfulchild, creative expression is a form of resistance and counterpoint to the dominant culture of the Canadian urban centres where they live and work.

In many respects, the year 2020 was a time of reckoning for Asian Americans. Hot on the heels of the landmark Asian ensemble-[...]

Read more » Peggy Hogan »

Understory’s Sonic Ecosystem

A NEW PERFORMANCE AND RECORDING SERIES CONNECTS IMPROVISING MUSICIANS FROM DIFFERENT GENRES AND TIME ZONES.

Like many performing musicians, I considered leaving the music business in 2020. The confluence of loss of work due to the pandemic, exhaustion from years of gig-hustling, and the[...]

Read more » Jennifer Thiessen »

Frank Denyer Probes the Unconscious

FOLLOWING WONDER

In composer Frank Denyer’s dream, he is watching a small monkey that is inexplicably nestled in the flames inside a stove that closely resembles the one in Denyer’s kitchen. The[...]

Read more » Nick Storring »