Featured Articles
Jairus Sharif and the Expression of Truth Jairus Sharif believes in the transformative power of music. On his debut album, Water & Tools, the thirty-three-year-old multi-instrumentalist constructs dense, impassioned improvisations that fuse the murky beatscapes of underground hip-hop with the scorching intensity of free jazz.[...] Read more
Musicworks' Marcelle Deschênes Prize in Electronic Music / Prix Marcelle Deschênes pour la musique électronique Please share this news with your friends, collaborators, and community. Now in its seventh year, the Marcelle Deschênes Prize in Electronic Music / Prix Marcelle Deschênes pour la musique électronique is part of the annual[...] Read more
Elastic Planets Stepping into this black cube is like entering an intergalactic observation deck. Enveloped by mechanical whirs, buzzes and clicks, a parade of heavenly bodies is presented for inspection. This particular set is kaleidoscopic in colour, malleable in shape, kinetic in nature, frenetic in texture[...] Read more
Music from the New Wilderness What can sound tell us about a place? Listen to British Columbia, and it might sound something like Music from the New Wilderness, a multimedia performance work that conjures B.C.’s past and evolving present by incorporating historical and current field recordings into new compositions[...] Read more
Jean-Philippe Jullin's Nadir and Diana Lawryshyn's Streams of Consciousness The 2021 Musicworks Electronic Music Composition Contest awarded two artists with honourable mentions: Jean-Philippe Jullin for Nadir and Diana Nadia Lawryshyn for Streams of Consciousness. JEAN-PHILIPPE JULLIN Born in 1995 in Marseille, France, Jean-Philippe[...] Read more
The Warp and Weft of Kelly Ruth In the history of musical instruments, the questions asked are pretty standard: Who played it? What did they play? How did it evolve? Kelly Ruth’s instrument, the weaving loom, carries an entirely different kind of history. It brings to mind mythology, solitary artisans, beautiful[...] Read more
What's Inside Musicworks 139? ON THE COVER: Evensong (2018) by Lou Sheppard, who recently made the 2021 long list for the prestigious Sobey Art Award. Congratulations Lou! This issue contains a special 30-page section that explores climate emergency through the stories of nine sound and music[...] Read more
Scrap Arts Music: Dr. Seuss meets steampunk Scrap Arts Music is a joyous collision of creativity, experimental sound, and energetic movement, with percussion pieces performed on reborn hunks of junk. It’s challenging to describe and impossible to ignore. Since 1998, when he founded Scrap Arts Music in[...] Read more
Baroque to the Future Few musical relationships are as difficult to parse as those between musicians and the instruments they play. It’s a type of interaction that feels like it should be simple—something transactional, between human subject and sounding object—but in practice, objects,[...] Read more
Scott Thomson Among bike bells, olives, and music maps, Scott Thomson lounges in his Montreal apartment, seeming to enjoy a relaxed summer evening. Later, the sight of his trombone—on a stand nearby—will remind him he has a lot of work to do. Scott is working on new piece to[...] Read more
Thierry Gauthier FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY “My artistic evolution,” Thierry Gauthier writes, “has been characterized by the intensity of impulse, immediacy, and the urgency to create; the quest for a paroxysm and the absolute; the same sense of urgency as[...] Read more
All-Set! Editions: Essentially Not Jazz Dapper Toronto imprint All-Set! Editions may be a newcomer to the subterranean ecosystem of experimental music distribution, but it already has a clearer sense of self than other more established labels. It’s spearheaded by a trio of composer-players, multi-instrumentalist Mike Smith,[...] Read more
