Featured Articles
First-place winner, Musicworks’ 2017 Electronic Music Composition contest The glitchy, vaguely dystopian composition constructed from manipulated vocals is almost widespread enough now to warrant its own genre tag. Laurie Anderson is, of course, its foremother. Recent interesting entries include Holly Herndon’s Platform, Katie Gately’s Pipes, and Giant[...] Read more
Roxanne Nesbitt’s Sonic Investigations People often describe sound as something that reverberates outward into space, but the music of interdisciplinary artist Roxanne Nesbitt seems to move inward; it has an audiovisual geometry that focuses the eye and the ear, pulling you closer to the source. To perform her 2010 composition[...] Read more
HAVN Records: Fronting Art Music in ‘The Hammer’ First came the band, then the space, then the label. The band is Haolin Munk, a jazz and hip-hop quartet formed in the early 2010s by drummer Aaron Hutchinson, tenor saxophonist Connor Bennett, alto saxophonist[...] Read more
Bus Ride Home—October Slow, manic whine of police sirens, urgent goose-call of fire engines, anxious “wait for me” of trailing first responders. All muffled under soft falling snow and crystallizing puddles and the breathing of almost three dozen passengers pressed close[...] Read more
The Audacious Artistry of Ig Henneman The year is 1979, and Ig Henneman is ready to rock. In pink zebra-print pants and a black tank top, she strikes a power pose on the stage of Amsterdam’s Paradiso. Her gold-painted Barcus-Berry electric viola glows in the spotlight. She is playing a Rock Against Racism show, flanked by[...] Read more
Leah Reid’s Jouer U.S. composer Leah Reid’s composition Jouer won the Marcelle Deschênes Prize in Electronic Music / Prix Marcelle Deschênes pour la musique électronique in the 2024 Musicworks Electronic Music Composition (EMC) Contest. This donor-supported annual prize awards $300 to[...] Read more
The Swedish Sound-Art Scene Nadine Byrne Monochrome images of two young women—evidently sisters—stare out impassively from oval apertures that resemble Victorian cameo brooches. A gauzy ectoplasmic fabric oozes from their mouths while, in an aperture between them, their faces merge in a dreamlike blur[...] 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
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
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
Ohama’s Alternative Dimensions Tona Walt Ohama has lived many lives. Born on a potato farm in Southern Alberta, he has spent the past forty years making passionate, deeply personal music while forging friendly connections with anyone who enters his orbit. Since his debut album, the 1982 cassette release Midnite News,[...] Read more
Rebecca Bruton Lets The World In Rebecca Bruton describes her work as an “understated, Surrealist folk music”—music that’s experimental but also simple, with a sensuousness and a weirdness to it. “Music that makes sense,” she says, “but you’re not sure why.”[...] Read more
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