Announcing the Winners of the 2022 Musicworks Electronic Music Composition Contest TORONTO, CANADA, April 20, 2023: Musicworks is thrilled to announce the winners of the 2022 Musicworks Electronic Music Composition Contest.   American composer, sound artist, and educator Leah Reid (left) has won first prize with her composition Reverie. “I am[...] Read more

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Ashley Au Is Stretching Out Most music fans in Winnipeg have seen plenty of Ashley Au playing bass in recent years in a wide range of idioms—Americana, hip-hop, jazz, and sludge metal. Pausing to tally current projects, Au counts in blinks before saying, “I’m in an open relationship with maybe seven[...] Read more

Profile Daniel Emberg Issue 139

Tristan Perich’s 1-Bit Symphony Tristan Perich’s 1-Bit Symphony (2009–10) is an electronic composition in five movements on a single microchip housed in a CD jewel case. 1-Bit Symphony is not a recording in the traditional sense; it is a complete electronic circuit that literally performs its music once it is[...] Read more

Visions of sound Tristan Perich Issue 109

The Combine Project The Combine Project (2004-09) is a series of kinetic sound sculptures constructed from an abandoned 1964 Allis-Chalmers All-Crop combine harvester. I discovered it ten years ago on a property my wife and I purchased when we moved from Toronto to rural Ontario. The piece of outdated farm[...] Read more

Visions of sound Steven White Issue 107

John Preus' Slow Sound On a brisk fall afternoon in October, about two dozen people hunkered down in the intimate main room of Chicago’s Experimental Sound Studio. They watched some of the city’s more open-minded musicians—including guitarist Leroy Bach and drummer Mikel Avery—improvise on[...] Read more

Sound Notes Peter Margasak Issue 118

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

Lea Bertucci composes time and space As I sit here listening to Metal Aether, the most recent full-length release from New York composer and performer Lea Bertucci, the difficulty of locating this music’s boundaries becomes increasingly clear. Bertucci’s compositions balance minimalist saxophone patterns with field[...] Read more

Sound Bite Darcy Spidle Issue 131

The Quiet Waves of Silla and Rise In early 2016 Ottawa-based DJ, producer, and dancer Eric Vani, aka Rise, was hired to create music to be played at the Canadian Museum of Nature’s Nature Nocturne—a themed-evening series that Vani describes as a “rave in the middle of dinosaur skeletons.”[...] Read more

Sound Bite Chaka V. Grier Issue 134

Michael Pounds' "Breathing 2: Re/Inspiration" Michael Pounds began his career as a mechanical engineer, receiving a B.S. from Ohio University. After working at the NASA Lewis Research Center, he returned to the academic world to study music composition with a focus on computer music and music technology. After undergraduate music[...] Read more

Sound Notes

The Radical Transcriptions of sfSound PERHAPS NO OTHER AMERICAN METROPOLIS is more associated with important countercultural movements than the San Francisco Bay Area. From the Beats of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s to the radical punks of the ’70s and ’80s, the “city by the Bay” has long[...] Read more

Featured Article Dan Joseph Issue 122

The Shapeshifting Sounds of Gabriel Dharmoo After experiencing Anthropologies Imaginaires, it’s hard to imagine that just a few years ago Gabriel Dharmoo, its creator and performer, was reluctant to use his spectacularly flexible voice to anything like its full extent.   In fact, he initially rebelled against[...] Read more

Sound Notes Alexander Varty Issue 125