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

Sound Bite Linda Barnard Issue 139

Craig Aalders’ el8dEra 3m Ice cracking and melting; a forest by the coast; a dream; breath lingering in the cold air—these are some of the images that come to mind when listening to Vancouver composer Craig Aalders’ el8dEra 3m, the first-prize-winning composition in Musicworks’ 2016 annual[...] Read more

Sound Bite Daniel Glassman Issue 127

2018 Spring & Summer Festival Preview     The usual anticipation for nice weather has been feeling like more like desperation—a longing for warmth, good vibes, and the freedom to explore everything under the sun.   I am planning to fill my[...] Read more

Featured Article

Leah Reid’s Reverie Leah Reid’s electronic music compositions explore and reveal the possibilities that exist between the abstract spaces in which she structures her compositions and the everyday timbres outside her window. Reid attended high school at the Walnut Hill School for the Arts in Massachusetts[...] Read more

Sound Notes Jennie Punter Issue 145

Musicworks #128: From the Ancient to the Avant-Garde GONG PUNKS AND CULTURE BOMBS Traditional Filipino kulintang, a style of orchestral music played on a set of brass gongs, is a mesmerizing and exhilarating mixture of the ancient and the avant-garde. This authentic indigenous music has been played in the southern Philippines for centuries[...] Read more

Featured Article STAFF

The Ondes Martenot is Making New Waves No one knows exactly how many functioning ondes Martenot are in use around the world today, but an informed, conservative estimate puts their number at sixty. In the course of half a century, Maurice Martenot, the creator of this most sensitive electronic musical instrument, was able to[...] Read more

Featured Article Caroline Martel Issue 117

The Quiet Waves of Silla and Rise In early 2016 Ottawa-based DJ, producer, and dancer Eric Vani, aka Rise, was hired to create music to be played at the Canadian Museum of Nature’s Nature Nocturne—a themed-evening series that Vani describes as a “rave in the middle of dinosaur skeletons.”[...] Read more

Sound Bite Chaka V. Grier Issue 134

Plumes Deconstructs Grimes Many Visions: Plumes Deconstructs the Music of Grimes is a genre-spanning music collaboration that seeks to explore and ultimately blur the lines between classical and pop. Thirteen contemporary classical composers have been asked to reimagine and rework the thirteen tracks on Grimes’[...] Read more

In the Works Mary Dickie Issue 126

Tom Zé FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY     The romantic Brazil—the one that ensnares tourists—does not include the Brazilian Northeast. Miles from Rio de Janeiro, this place is worlds removed from the urban sophisticates that dwell in the south.[...] Read more

Featured Article Alex Molotkow Issue 105

Di Mainstone Fashions a New Sonic Future Di Mainstone, inventor of the Human Harp, describes herself as a “bridge botherer.” But to be accurate, her bridge-bothering activities are fairly recent. Before bridges (the Human Harp has, to date, played bridges in Brooklyn, Omaha, and Bristol) came mood-sensitive kinetic[...] Read more

Sound Notes Louise Gray Issue 123

Charles Stankievech FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY     Some time ago, a friend and I were talking outside a gallery, when suddenly we saw a bright green object sear through the night sky. Assuming it to be a stray firework, we waited for the expected explosion and crackles. We waited and[...] Read more

Featured Article Laura Paolini Issue 106