Anna Höstman / Cheryl Duvall. Harbour. As a child, Anna Höstman loved to play piano. She gave a performance of her earliest written work at age twelve, a joyful experience that she later compared to setting a boat on a river and being carried downstream. On Harbour, recorded at Toronto’s Glenn Gould Studio, and the[...] Read more

Recordings Julian Cowley Issue 136

Works by Alberta composer Mark Hannesson featured on three Edition Wandelweiser Records albums Neil Young’s music is maybe one of the last things one would associate with Wandelweiser, the international collective of composers known for their copious silences, extended durations, and soft dynamics. However, on Albertan member Mark Hannesson’s guitar work If I appear[...] Read more

Recordings Nick Storring

Ian William Craig. Red Sun Through Smoke. In the summer of 2018 wildfires tore through British Columbia, leaving the city of Kelowna enveloped in smoke. Composer and singer Ian William Craig, who had temporarily relocated there from his Vancouver home, recorded what would become Red Sun Through Smoke. Craig’s grandfather had[...] Read more

Recordings Laura Stanley Issue 136

crys cole. Beside Myself. Beside Myself, the second full-length album by Canadian sound artist crys cole, is a peculiar beast. Its two tracks, both clocking in around twenty minutes, feature immersive soundworlds that are constantly transforming. The Nonsuch begins with the sound of cole writing with a pencil. The[...] Read more

Recordings Joshua Minsoo Kim Issue 136

Lina Allemano’s Ohrenschmaus. Rats and Mice / Lina Allemano. Glimmer Glammer. Since 2013, trumpeter Lina Allemano has been dividing her time evenly between two cities, maintaining her eponymous quartet and developing other initiatives in Toronto, while studying extended techniques and expanding her musical impulses across a broad range of improvisatory ensembles in[...] Read more

Recordings Stuart Broomer Issue 136

2020 Winnipeg New Music Festival. The twenty-ninth edition of the annual Winnipeg New Music Festival (WNMF) loosely explored the concept of home and, conversely, what it means to be an outsider—or even an exile—in one’s own land. Seven nightly programs, spearheaded by the WNMF’s cocurators Daniel[...] Read more

Concerts and Events Holly Harris Issue 136

Rob Clutton with Tony Malaby. Offering. Bolstering his skills as an improviser and composer, Toronto bassist Rob Clutton reconstitutes some of his previously recorded improvisations as notated kernels for this program with New York saxophonist Tony Malaby. No rote recapitulations here, those themes and others are stretched and[...] Read more

Recordings Ken Waxman

Zosha di Castri. Tachitipo. New York–based Canadian composer Zosha di Castri’s Tachitipo is a striking, rigorous debut album of solo and chamber works. Comprising interpretations by a veritable who’s who of contemporary performers—International Contemporary Ensemble, Yarn/Wire, and the Jack[...] Read more

Recordings Monica Pearce

Phil Minton / Veryan Weston. Ways for an Orchestra. English singer Phil Minton and pianist Veryan Weston have been working together since the early 1980s, their wayward path crisscrossing and combining music hall, art song, free improvisation, and union anthems. Usually restricted to duo and quartet formats, here they make the most of a[...] Read more

Recordings Stuart Broomer

Charles Barabé. La lente histoire de l’oubli. Based in Victoriaville, Quebec, the prolific electronic composer Charles Barabé has become a preeminent figure in the North American tape-label underground with a varied five-year streak of releases for notable imprints such as Jeunesse Cosmique, Orange Milk, Crash Symbols, and Astral[...] Read more

Recordings Nick Storring

Tomeka Reid Quartet. Old New Having played with a who’s who of the Chicago jazz scene young and old—Nicole Mitchell, Joshua Abrams, Roscoe Mitchell, Jaimie Branch—for well over a decade, cellist Tomeka Reid isn’t lacking in avant-garde bona fides. Yet her work under her own name, in an updated[...] Read more

Recordings Daniel Glassman Issue 135