Featured Articles
The Apperceptive Musical Adventures of Taylor Brook Canadian composer Taylor Brook—whose music can strike an unusual balance between challenge and charm, sometimes with an astonishing delicacy—had been based since 2011 in New York City, where he was first a doctoral student and then a lecturer at Columbia University, all the while[...] Read more
Beny Esguerra Unifies the Equation The potential for music to unite people across divides—geographical, temporal, cultural, or philosophical—is a constant inspiration for Ruben “Beny” Esguerra. Through his myriad projects, the Toronto songwriter, producer, educator, community activist, and multi-[...] Read more
Pierre Kwenders Dreams for the World “I grew up surrounded by music lovers. There was always music playing and people dancing. There was always a reason for a family gathering, and I was one of those kids always ready to dance. Whenever there was a family gathering, there was an acoustic guitar around and my uncle would[...] Read more
Roscoe Mitchell and the Montreal-Toronto Art Orchestra The year 2017 is being widely celebrated as the centenary of jazz, marked by the hundredth anniversary of the music’s first recordings, the Original Dixieland Jazz Band’s “Livery Stable Blues” and “Dixie Jass Band One Step.” Jazz began as a spontaneous,[...] Read more
Resonant Frequencies I first encountered Alanna Stuart on a mid-November evening in 2018. After an exhilarating trudge through the snow-muted streets of Toronto’s Stanley Park neighbourhood, I made what felt like a heroic landing at Array Space, where a few dozen or so hearty souls were gathering for a[...] Read more
Rachael Wadham: Installing A Quiet Sound-World FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY The work of Vancouver-based sound artist, improviser, and composer Rachael Wadham often hinges upon a certain pack-rat sensibility, with sounds scavenged from mundane, remote, or even derelict sources, squirrelled away with humble[...] Read more
John Wynne FULL TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY A chill-blue image of ocean waves projects across the join of two white walls. At first the image appears still, but then you notice the waves undulating gently. On a table in front of the image, and housed in a small casket with[...] Read more
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
Christine Duncan Unleashes the Elements IT ALL CAME BACK SO FAST: the Whip, the Punch, the Elements. All those gestures unlocked my voice and made it respond exactly as it was supposed to—even after a five-year absence. Late last year, I embedded myself with the Element Choir, the world’s leading[...] Read more
Sonic City We presume hush because business has yet to come. People stand, the movement of feet inaudible Over the creeping perception of noise An indistinguishable hum pervading the acoustic Of suitcases’ wheels Clitter-clattering across cobbled stones Some[...] Read more
Field Notes From Fort McMurray in the damp morning air: rain pitter-patters on whispering leaves. inherited onomatopoeic vocabulary; true but tried tropes carrying with them vague echoes of that singular safety known to the time when board books taught us to affix words to sounds, predictably, repeatably. a wind sighs,[...] Read more
Jörg Piringer's Sound Poetry App FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY The iPod touch is hissing loudly as two s’s move about the screen leaving a trail of fading s shapes in their wake. I drag the image of an r onto the screen with my finger, wanting to hear what effect that will have on the[...] Read more
