Featured Articles

What's Inside Musicworks 137? The Fall 2020 issue comes preloaded with guitars. Hollow, heavy, bowed, cracked, pedalled, flung. Trusty companions. Feedback demons. Easy to pick up, hard to put down . . . just like every issue of Musicworks! BUY THE FALL 2020 ISSUE FROM OUR SHOP OR SAVE 50% OFF THE COVER PRICE WITH A[...] Read more

Featured Article Issue 137

Casey Koyczan Resonates the Future In early July 2020 it was my pleasure to interview Tlicho Dene interdisciplinary artist Casey Koyczan. He is extremely generous and open. I have done my best to represent our conversation in order for readers to discover and understand his creative practices. Focusing on the Northwest[...] Read more

Featured Article Mercedes Webb Issue 137

Terri Hron joins the flock The slight, bright-eyed woman comfortably seated in her sunny Montreal studio is known as a musical beast. Hard to imagine. But the epithet is just one of several that contemporary recorder player and composer Terri Hron has earned—not on the expected grounds of virtuosity, but rather[...] Read more

Sound Bite Jason van Eyk Issue 110

Craig Aalders’ el8dEra 3m Ice cracking and melting; a forest by the coast; a dream; breath lingering in the cold air—these are some of the images that come to mind when listening to Vancouver composer Craig Aalders’ el8dEra 3m, the first-prize-winning composition in Musicworks’ 2016 annual[...] Read more

Sound Bite Daniel Glassman Issue 127

New Stages For New Music Intense purple LED light washes over the Thin Edge New Music Collective (ABOVE PHOTO) as they scramble to soundcheck, seeming to heighten the chaotic mood at Long Winter, Toronto’s monthly interarts festival series during the coldest season. Two different sources of electric guitar[...] Read more

Featured Article David Dacks and Peter Burton Issue 125

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

Featured Article Sara Constant Issue 141

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

Shifting the Narrative The time for postponing discussions of environmental issues is over. This is the main thrust of two music-and-sound-powered documentary projects, both of which aim to encourage honest conversations about climate change and to explore the many ways our lives intertwine with—and impact[...] Read more

Featured Article Jesse Locke Issue 139

Darsha Hewitt Following the work of Darsha Hewitt is like feeling your way through the inside of an electronic circuit. It is tactile, visceral. Her trial-and-error approach comes from a truly experimental place, and during my conversation with her, I suggest that I have imagined her jotting down[...] Read more

In the Works David McCallum Issue 107

Micachu & The Shapes FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY    Growing up on the outskirts of London, kids are drawn to the city by any number of attractions, from shops to sport matches, from galleries to gangsta posing. For Mica Levi, it was classical-music concerts. Growing up in an intensely[...] Read more

Featured Article Jonathan Bunce Issue 114

Nate Wooley’s Seven Storey Mountain Jump into an early version of Nate Wooley’s Seven Storey Mountain, and you land in dark and turbulent, almost infernal terrain. Sounds are dense and blur into one another: trumpet amplified to distortion levels; prerecorded tape of unidentifiable noises; dense, rapid drumming of[...] Read more

Featured Article Stuart Broomer Issue 118

Kyle Brenders It’s 1999. The millennium is approaching, and Kyle Brenders, teenage saxophonist, is living the small-town Ontario version of the jazz life. He’s a member of the Bill Sherry Big Band, playing vintage swing tunes for dancers in the St. Thomas municipal arena, decades-old tunes[...] Read more

Sound Notes Stuart Broomer Issue 108