Festival International de Musique Actuelle, 29th Edition. A coup for Victo this year, the all-day Zorn@60 birthday celebration prompted the return of fans who had been absent for a decade or more. Long lineups winding from the downtown Cinema Laurier had local Sunday strollers stopping to inquire as to what event was drawing such a crowd. It’[...] Read more

Concerts and Events Frédérique Arroyas Issue 117

Tuen Verbruggen & Arve Henriksen. Black Swan; The Bureau of Atomic Tourism. Second Law of Thermodynamics. These two recent CDs give a strong picture of the breadth of Belgian percussionist Tuen Verbruggen’s playing, showcasing a duo in studio and a live performance as part of a sextet.   Verbruggen’s duet with the Norwegian trumpeter Arve Henriksen was done[...] Read more

Recordings Chris Kennedy Issue 117

Mecha Fixes Clocks. Beau comme un aéroport; Pink Saliva. Il parait que. These two CDs, released on Eric Normand’s Tour de Bras imprint, have in common the trumpet of Elwood Epps and the drums of Michel F. Coté, both players dynamic forces on Montreal’s improvised and musique actuelle scenes. Coté’s work, both as a composer[...] Read more

Recordings Mike Chamberlain Issue 117

Beverley Johnston. Woman Runs with Wolves. Woman Runs with Wolves, percussionist Beverley Johnston’s fifth solo release on Centrediscs, is undoubtedly her most eclectically programmed to date. Pulling from her sixty-plus commissions of Canadian composers’ work, the selections range across two decades of creation to shape[...] Read more

Recordings Jason van Eyk Issue 117

Bruno Heinen Sextet. Karlheinz Stockhausen: Tierkreis. Tierkreis (German for zodiac) is Stockhausen’s most accessible, most adapted, and likely best-known work. It may also be the most symmetrical, its twelve movements conforming to the zodiac’s twelve signs, each melody based on a twelve-tone row, the pieces arranged in the sequence[...] Read more

Recordings Stuart Broomer Issue 117

Drumheller. Sometimes Machine. Supergroup is both an apt and a ridiculous descriptor for Drumheller, which comprises some of Toronto’s most celebrated experimental and jazz musicians—Nick Fraser, Eric Chenaux (now a Parisian), Brodie West, Rob Clutton, and Doug Tielli—each member teeming with personality and[...] Read more

Recordings Nick Storring Issue 117

Anthony Braxton. Echo Echo Mirror House. At the 2011 Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville, composer and saxophonist Anthony Braxton led a septet in his Composition No. 347+. That “+” in a Braxton title will usually be followed by a series of numbers indicating interpolated compositions, but in No. 347[...] Read more

Recordings Stuart Broomer Issue 117

Antoine Beuger, Jürg Frey. Dedalus. This CD documents the performance of two compositions by flutist Antoine Beuger and one by clarinettist Jürg Frey at a side space of Les Instants Chavirés in Montreuil, France. Beuger and Frey are both longtime members of Wandelweiser Group, a collective of international composers[...] Read more

Recordings Chris Kennedy Issue 117

Insubordinations The shifting technological terrain that has brought about the decline of the CD, the rise of the download, and the return of the LP, invites inventive solutions from musicians who want to get their music heard. In this spirit, the Swiss netlabel Insubordinations combines free downloads along[...] Read more

Recordings Stuart Broomer Issue 117

Christof Migone. Sonic Somatic: Performances of the Unsound Body. / Fingering. It comes as no surprise that the first word of Sonic Somatic is “Merdre!” Migone has long been a purveyor of bodily functions, putting out recordings of knuckle-cracks (Crackers, 1999), collected bottles of spit (Spit, 1997–1999), and crassly named music projects (Fingering,[...] Read more

Books Chris Kennedy Issue 116

Centrediscs On the surface, Centrediscs seems like a relatively simple proposition: a specialized recording label that showcases the work of Canada’s most talented composers. This is exactly what the Canadian Music Centre set out to do in 1981, under the initiative of national director John Peter[...] Read more

Recordings Jason van Eyk Issue 116