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

Featured Article Peggy Hogan Issue 140

Chloe Alexandra Thompson’s Meaningful Exchanges Chloe Alexandra Thompson has always thought of sound as something visceral. “I think, if I trace it back, my first sound installation happened when I discovered that the fabric in front of loudspeakers could move from the sound vibrations,” she tells me. “I just freaked out[...] Read more

Featured Article Sara Constant Issue 143

Thin Edge New Music Collective Joins the Circus   Last year, pianist Cheryl Duvall and violinist Ilana Waniuk joined the circus. This did not involve playing instruments while hanging from a trapeze, but like many big-top acts, it did require a certain amount of risk.         [...] Read more

Featured Article Jennie Punter Issue 127

James O’Callaghan’s Bodies-Soundings James O’Callaghan’s Bodies-Soundings, winner of Musicworks’ 2014 Electronic Music Composition contest, is a highly suspenseful acousmatic piece in which sounds are partially diffused through tactile transducers (specialized speakers that transmit sound through any object to[...] Read more

Sound Bite Jennie Punter Issue 121

STEIM FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY     Maybe someone would have been able to guess what I was getting myself into when I left for STEIM in The Netherlands. After all, there was a pretty clear sign. All passengers had boarded the plane, and we all were eager to get to our[...] Read more

Featured Article Glen Hall Issue 109

Jeff Morton FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY   I imagine that what I hear echoing off the walls of the white-cube gallery is the proceedings of a robot congress, a cacophonous, fevered debate on robot rights—and not a single little robot agrees with any other. I detect[...] Read more

In the Works David McCallum Issue 113

Bagpipes Blew My Mind My partner Emily and I moved to Glasgow from Toronto a year ago. The first TV shows we saw included a pipe-band championship and a shepherding competition. Both were brilliant to listen to. We thought that’s what TV was going to be here. It isn’t. And aside from the guys on[...] Read more

Sonic Geography Josh Thorpe Issue 132

All-Set! Editions: Essentially Not Jazz Dapper Toronto imprint All-Set! Editions may be a newcomer to the subterranean ecosystem of experimental music distribution, but it already has a clearer sense of self than other more established labels. It’s spearheaded by a trio of composer-players, multi-instrumentalist Mike Smith,[...] Read more

Sound Notes Nick Storring Issue 127

The Musical Lightness of Éric Normand The world of improvised music has spawned a core of musician–organizers who have built scenes and networks and record labels to support and extend the music. Few, however, have achieved what Éric Normand has, creating a hotbed of free improvisation in the relatively isolated[...] Read more

Featured Article Stuart Broomer Issue 126

MUSICWORKS UNVEILS 2017 CONTEST WINNERS Musicworks is thrilled to announce the winners of its 2017 contests.   Erik Ingalls’ The Gravity of Plim has won first place in Musicworks’ 2017 Electronic Music Composition contest. Ingalls’ winning piece began as an accompaniment to a science-fiction[...] Read more

Sound Notes STAFF

Webber/Morris Big Band On a cold January evening in 2019, Angela Morris approaches the bandstand of Manhattan’s Jazz Gallery and announces that she will be able to conduct her piece that night. A few days ago it was still uncertain. Weeks earlier, on Christmas Eve, she broke her shoulder, making the arm[...] Read more

Profile Kurt Gottschalk Issue 133