Featured Articles
Sarah Hennies, Linguist in the Land of Noises Identity is a deeply personal, elusive, and complex thing, and thus, a common source of creative fuel. Yet for the endless variety of discrete identities and individual perspectives on the topic, there is a dominant set of tropes around the way that identity is addressed artistically. The[...] Read more
Emilie LeBel’s Field Notes For many composers, a work in progress comes with strings attached—no pun intended. There are arts councils and concert presenters to satisfy, musicians to liaise with, premiere dates that draw ever closer. Deadlines, of course, can get the juices flowing, and creative constraints ([...] Read more
Vancouver's Intercultural Music Scene Intercultural music-making in British Columbia is nothing new. Gold seekers brought the violin to the province’s north in the 1890s, and their jigs and reels were quickly adapted by the region’s Tahltan musicians into a true hybrid form. In the mid-1960s, Vancouver performers[...] Read more
Micachu & The Shapes FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY Growing up on the outskirts of London, kids are drawn to the city by any number of attractions, from shops to sport matches, from galleries to gangsta posing. For Mica Levi, it was classical-music concerts. Growing up in an intensely[...] 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
Amy Brandon is Capturing Intimate Chaos The first time I met guitarist-composer Amy Brandon, we talked about the lineage of a particular sound. Her 2019 composition Mimic—written while she participated in the Canadian League of Composers’[...] Read more
Victor Gama builds a brave new soundworld Wherever Victor Gama plays, you can be sure clusters of people will be jostling to percuss the upturned metal bowls of his tipaw (so called because the surface of the instrument looks like the pads of a tiger paw), to bow the eight metal strings of the tahra, or simply to wander the length[...] Read more
Clint Conley and Hildegard Westerkamp FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY You haven’t picked up your guitar in weeks, if not months. You stare at the staff paper and the rows of empty lines burn an impression on your retina. Is this just writer’s block, or is it gone for good?[...] Read more
Inside The National Music Centre The Original New Timbral Orchestra, known simply as TONTO, has been called “a synthesizer the size of Nebraska.” The appearance of this electronic monolith makes an immediate impression. Housed in a twenty-foot semicircle of six-foot-tall wooden cabinets with knobs, keyboards,[...] Read more
William Northlich’s Topaz 0.3nyV Edmonton, Alberta-based composer William Northlich, aka BlipVert, was awarded second place in the 2024 Musicworks Electronic Music Composition Contest for Topaz 0.3nyV. Click the PLAY button above to listen. Northlich shared some notes with Musicworks[...] Read more
Reclaiming Chinatown In many respects, the year 2020 was a time of reckoning for Asian Americans. Hot on the heels of the landmark Asian ensemble-cast blockbuster Crazy Rich Asians, South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho made history with Parasite, which took home the first Academy Award for Best Picture ever to be[...] Read more
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