2022 Guelph Jazz Festival. The 2022 edition of the Guelph Jazz Festival marked a singular recovery from the rigours of the COVID-19 pandemic, with more presentation venues engaged than at any time in its twenty-eight-year history.   Following the cancellation of the 2020 season, the festival’s[...] Read more

Concerts and Events Stuart Broomer

Nick Storring. Music from Wéi 成为. In 2017, choreographer Yvonne Ng commissioned Nick Storring to compose music for a piece with five dancers to be performed at the Banff Centre, a circumstance requiring Storring to depart from his characteristically dense works with multiple layered instruments. His solution was a tape piece[...] Read more

Recordings Stuart Broomer Issue 143

Gordon Grdina. Oddly Enough: The Music of Tim Berne. During COVID-19 lockdowns, Brooklyn-based Tim Berne began sending idiosyncratic compositions to Vancouver guitarist Gordon Grdina. As soon as one of the interpretations was recorded and emailed back, Berne dispatched another. This back-and-forth continued for a year until enough music was[...] Read more

Recordings Ken Waxman Issue 143

Eucalyptus. Moves. Moves is the sixth release from Eucalyptus, a group of Toronto-based jazz and improvisation veterans led by alto saxophonist Brodie West (Musicworks 128). The ensemble’s personnel has remained relatively stable over the years, with West, keyboardist Ryan Driver, trumpeter Nicole[...] Read more

Recordings Lawrence Joseph Issue 143

Esmerine. Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More. Esmerine is a group of Montreal multi-instrumentalists with sonic and historical ties to peers like Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Set Fire to Flames, and Thee Silver Mt. Zion, and with a virtual universe of sounds in their arsenal. On their seventh album, core members Rebecca Foon, Bruce[...] Read more

Recordings Mary Dickie Issue 143

Katelyn Clark & Isaiah Ceccarelli. Landmarks. Modern eras, Umberto Eco suggested, have revisited the European Middle Ages ever since they ended. His own novel The Name of the Rose illustrates that point; so does the so-called early music revival. Katelyn Clark, heard here playing continuo and portative pipe organs,[...] Read more

Recordings Julian Cowley Issue 143

Allison Cameron. Somatic Refrain. In the cover story of Musicworks 122, Nick Storring addressed the “beautifully puzzling” quality of Allison Cameron’s work, illuminating her music-making through its informed acceptance of her elusiveness and its grasp of her fascination with sound. Somatic[...] Read more

Recordings Julian Cowley Issue 143

Derek Bailey. Domestic Jungle. In the ’90s, London guitarist Derek Bailey would sit at home and improvise along with jungle and drum-and-bass music playing on underground radio stations. The DJs would repeat music, then suddenly drop off and talk aimlessly—it was all fodder for the anarchic genius of Bailey,[...] Read more

Recordings Stuart Broomer Issue 143

An Laurence 安媛. Almost Touching. Montreal-based guitarist and vocalist An Laurence (An Laurence 安媛, in full) fervently explores every crevice of her instruments on her debut album Almost Touching. The record features six works for guitar, voice, and electronics, each traversing a different sonic palette including spiralling[...] Read more

Recordings Vanessa Ague Issue 143

Sound Symposium XX The Newfoundland and Labrador Sound Symposium returned in full form this year, delivering nine jam-packed days of events for its twentieth anniversary. There was a special energy to this year’s festival, maybe because collaboration was something we had taken for granted pre-pandemic.[...] Read more

Concerts and Events Wendy Rose Issue 143

London Contemporary Music Festival Walking away from the Thames on the final night of the London Contemporary Music Festival (LCMF), I was reminded of the classic scene from The Simpsons in which Bart’s friend Nelson emerges from a screening of David Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch and says, “I can think of at[...] Read more

Concerts and Events Daniel Glassman Issue 143