Resequencing Resonances PHOTOGRAPHS BY GREEN YANG   Resonances are ghosts. They accentuate unseen presences of sounding bodies as they amplify frequencies inherent in them. Noted Italian composer Luciano Berio explored the transfer of energy from one body to another in his Sequenza X (1984), which[...] Read more

Featured Article Juro Kim Feliz Issue 143

Jessica McMann Brings the Music Home While some creative people have been struggling to fill their time over the course of the pandemic, Cree dancer and musician Jessica McMann, who is a member of Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan—has been busy. But with powwows and in-person contemporary dance performances on pause[...] Read more

Sound Bite Elizabeth Chorney-Booth Issue 141

Paul Walde Subverts Nature as Culture The column of light is beamed directly into the sky. As if intended to summon some celestial visitor, the beam of photons is emitted from a circle of glowing discs, placed in the most unassuming place imaginable—a farmer’s field (don’t ET’s always land there?). This,[...] Read more

Featured Article Jonathan Bunce Issue 109

Margaret Noble and Caitlin Smith win top marks in Musicworks' 2013 Electronic Music Composition and "Sonic Geography" Writing contests TORONTO, February 4, 2014   Musicworks is thrilled to announce the winners of its 2013 contests. San Diego interdisciplinary artist Margaret Noble’s Safer Is Better has won first place in Musicworks’ 2013 Electronic Music Composition contest, and[...] Read more

Sound Notes

The Idiosyncratic Musicality of Marc Sabat The emergence of Arnold Schoenberg’s twelve-tone technique in the early 1920s not only presented an altogether new conception of pitch in music, it also prompted a dramatic and widespread shift in the fundamental thinking surrounding Western concert music. Its latent quasiscientific[...] Read more

Featured Article Nick Storring Issue 125

Louis Andriessen brings the noise Louis Andriessen arrived on the international scene with a bang. In 1976 he unleashed De Staat (The Republic) on unsuspecting audiences. The political charge of the composition came from texts of Plato sung by four soprano voices hovering like ethereal apparitions over pounding, iron-fisted[...] Read more

Featured Article René van Peer Issue 119

Luke Nickel Transmits a Living Score Luke Nickel has written me a piece.   No, wait.   That’s not quite right.   Luke Nickel has left me a series of sometimes vague, sometimes specific instructions via audio recordings of his voice, which I am only allowed to listen to[...] Read more

Featured Article Heather Roche Issue 132

Healing Power Records Hits Toronto With a Sonic Balm The last place you’d expect to hear a comprehensive showcase of a modern experimental music community is on a dance mix. But with Heart of Toronto, a 2013 CD and download compilation, the Toronto-based label Healing Power has done just that. A compelling snapshot of North America[...] Read more

Sound Notes Jonathan Bunce Issue 118

Colin Stetson's Sound Story Stories in which the protagonist blossoms, finds themselves, or rediscovers their roots appear everywhere. Their ubiquity makes it awfully tempting to replicate this narrative when telling the story of a solo artist who has arrived at a uniquely focused sound world. Yet sometimes it’s more[...] Read more

Featured Article Nick Storring Issue 116

Amanda Dawn Christie’s Requiem for Radio In 2012 the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) began to tear down its Radio-Canada International towers in Sackville, New Brunswick (home to some 6,000 people and best known as the locale of the beloved SappyFest). The dismantling of the towers wasn’t just another chapter in the[...] Read more

Visions of sound Kiva Reardon Issue 127