Milan FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY   A sonic spectre is haunting Milan’s music scene. That ghostly presence is Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901), Italy’s best-known composer of romantic operas, who moved to the city when young, shot to fame with Nabucco in 1842[...] Read more

Sonic Geography Ken Waxman Issue 105

Linda Catlin Smith Lets In the Light   It’s 2004. I am taking my first composition course at Mount Allison University. I have recently become enamoured of new music and am catching up on a long list of listening in the basement of the Alfred Whitehead Memorial Music Library. I come across Memory Forms (2001), a[...] Read more

Featured Article Monica Pearce Issue 133

Binatone Galaxy Binatone Galaxy is an installation for used cassette players that looks on their obsolescence not as an ending, but as an opportunity to reconsider their functional potential. Superseded by digital audio players as recording and playback devices, cassette players become, in this work,[...] Read more

Visions of sound Stephen Cornford Issue 112

First-place Winner, Musicworks 2017 Sonic Geography Writing Contest Childhood has no single place,  no secret garden, no single carousel to ride on, nor tree branch to fall from: just hours, that slip away, so similar to music,  which has no place either, just passing time it tries to keep up with[...] Read more

Sonic Geography Ina Čiumakova Issue 130

Myk Freedman Makes Room for an Ensemble of One (This article was originally published in Spring 2015.)   Myk Freedman is best known as the lap-steel-wielding leader of the nonet St. Dirt Elementary School, whose idiosyncratically tuneful music (released on Rat Drifting and on Barnyard Records) is nestled in the crevice[...] Read more

In the Works Nick Storring Issue 121

The Complex Stillness of Mark Ellestad “For me, there is a kind of stillness in music that comes from a generous and welcoming place. It has nothing to do with speed or style or tradition or school. It can come from dark or light, from any shade of intensity. It doesn’t need to express anything at all. I love it when[...] Read more

Profile Julian Cowley Issue 142

Pheeroan akLaff Pheeroan akLaff believes in drums first, rather than last. He can drive an ensemble forward with the machine-gun attack of his snare and the rolling thunder of his bass and toms, compounding and enriching the music with dense polyrhythms, or using the metallic shimmer of his cymbals to surmount[...] Read more

Featured Article Stuart Broomer Issue 114

Arkora’s Cloud Chamber Arkora, a Toronto-based electric, vocal, chamber consort, includes an eight-voice choir and an accompanying ensemble, with irresistible composer bait—the Lumiphone. A giant, three-octave, thirty-one-tone, equal-tempered (31-TET) glass marimba, the Lumiphone was designed and constructed[...] Read more

Visions of sound Tova Kardonne Issue 137

The Restless Art of Radwan Ghazi Moumneh It’s Friday night in Montreal, and a who’s who of local musicians is packed into the back room of Casa del Popolo to check out the first public appearance of Master of Masters My Master. Nobody knows anything about the music they are about to hear. All they have to go on is an[...] Read more

Featured Article Dimitri Nasrallah Issue 119

Lido Pimienta curates a sonic community Colombia-born, Toronto-based Lido Pimienta has been called “the consummate collaborator”—and with good reason. Although she writes, sings, produces, and plays many instruments—and is certainly talented and strong-willed enough to make recordings on her own—[...] Read more

Sound Bite Mary Dickie Issue 120

Richard Windeyer FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY     Sitting behind his drum kit and laptop, Richard Windeyer manages the energy of the dance floor, while his colleague Sabrina Reeves emcees the evening’s events. A slow folk ballad suddenly ramps up to 120 bpm; the room pauses for[...] Read more

Featured Article Chris Kennedy Issue 107