Sarah Neufeld: Solo Violin, Guerrilla-Style “I COULDN'T EVEN PLAY A NOTE. If you even breathe, your breath becomes this crazy, feathery freight train of echo.”   Sarah Neufeld recalls her first visit to Devil’s Mountain with a mixture of fear and delight. The site of an abandoned array of[...] Read more

Profile Jonathan Bunce Issue 117

Charlemagne Palestine Pulls Out the Stops Interpretation takes the sensory experience of the work of art for granted, and proceeds from there. What is important now is to recover our senses. We must learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more. —Susan Sontag, “Against Interpretation”  [...] Read more

Featured Article Julian Cowley Issue 117

Jessie Lausé's Movements Jessie Lausé wins second place in the 2021 Musicworks Electronic Music Composition Contest for Movements, a three-movement work for eight-channel mixed media.    “[Movements] explores the melodic and registral capabilities of modified human and spatial[...] Read more

Featured Article

Derek Charke Derek Charke is irresistibly attracted to the North. In 2006 he found himself in the Yukon, dogsledding with the Kronos Quartet. For a composer with a love of the Arctic it doesn’t get better, or more surreal, than this. A few days earlier he had been in a Whitehorse hotel room where[...] Read more

Featured Article WL Altman Issue 113

Malcolm Cecil and the History of TONTO THE FOLLOWING STORY WAS PUBLISHED AS PART OF THE SUMMER / FALL 2017 FEATURE "INSIDE THE NATIONAL MUSIC CENTRE."  Malcolm Cecil’s interest in electronics began at age nine, when he became the youngest member of a ham radio club in England. His mother was an accomplished[...] Read more

Featured Article Jesse Locke Issue 128

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

Cris Derksen enhances her sonic adventure Some musicians fall in love with an instrument at a very young age and never look back; others experiment with many different ones before they find the ideal match for their talents. Cris Derksen is one of the latter. As a child, she first wanted to play flute, then saxophone, then double[...] Read more

Featured Article Mary Dickie Issue 121

New Age Music—The Second Wave I’m lying on the living-room floor. I’ve been like this for two hours, on my back, in the dark, headphones on. The record on the turntable is literally locked in its groove and producing a low-note drone that at times sounds like a whale’s moan or some sort of detuned,[...] Read more

Featured Article Jay Somerset Issue 107

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

Émilie Payeur FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY   Émilie Payeur is young and inspired. “Electroacoustic music is a different kind of music,” she says. “To me, it is even more than music. It’s literally sound painting, and that is why it should be seen[...] Read more

Sound Bite Ted Harms Issue 109