The Idiosyncratic Musicality of Marc Sabat The emergence of Arnold Schoenberg’s twelve-tone technique in the early 1920s not only presented an altogether new conception of pitch in music, it also prompted a dramatic and widespread shift in the fundamental thinking surrounding Western concert music. Its latent quasiscientific[...] Read more

Featured Article Nick Storring Issue 125

The Many Trajectories of Erin Rogers Erin Rogers and Dennis Sullivan are facing each other on the stage of Manhattan’s Le Poisson Rouge in late February of 2020, a small table of gear between them. They take turns triggering samples of sportscasters by pounding large, illuminated buttons as if playing bare-knuckle Whac-a-[...] Read more

Profile Kurt Gottschalk Issue 136

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

Sound Notes STAFF

Margaret Noble's Safer Is Better   With an underground club DJ’s flair for performance and a conceptual artist’s commitment to the rigorous investigation of ideas, San Diego interdisciplinary artist Margaret Noble explores in her sound work Frakture the resonance in contemporary society of George[...] Read more

Sound Bite Jennie Punter Issue 118

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

Cold Wave A sad-looking polar bear drifts on a shrinking ice sheet in a vast, deep-blue sea under a bright, blue sky. Scenes like this have long been used to illustrate climate change, and they are more than symbolic. Polar regions are warming at more than twice the rate of the rest of the world. The[...] Read more

Featured Article Jonathan Bunce Issue 139

Public Recordings' what we are saying “Is being together possible?” The first words spoken in what we are saying, a sound­–dance piece by the Toronto-based experimental performance company Public Recordings, have a disruptive effect—an abrupt imposition of language into an initially wordless and[...] Read more

Sound Notes Christopher Willes Issue 125

Extermination Music Night It’s quarter past midnight in late May 2008. Storm clouds loom but hold, on this surprisingly humid night. I open the garage, grab my bike and check my backpack: flashlight, five cans of beer, five-dollar donation, notepad and pen. I recheck the instructions I printed from an online[...] Read more

Featured Article Jay Somerset Issue 105

Saxophonist Karen Ng Sets The Scene THINK OF ANY STYLE OF MODERN saxophone playing, and chances are Toronto’s Karen Ng has done it, and done it beautifully. Her tone can be eerily high and pure, rich and fluid, deep and mellow, alluringly tender or startlingly abrasive. Her fingers fly in a dazzling, exuberant run, then[...] Read more

Featured Article Mary Dickie Issue 129

What's Inside Musicworks 150 ON THE COVER Maylee Todd                     Maylee Todd has made a practice of embracing everything, especially when it comes to crafting a uniquely weird aesthetic—such as her busy digital avatar Maloo—out of[...] Read more

Featured Article Issue 150

Luca Kasper's "Atelier Métal" Swiss sound and visual artist Luca Kasper’s Atelier Métal was awarded third place in the 2023 Musicworks Electronic Music Composition Contest. Hit the PLAY button above to listen.   Currently based in France, in the countryside near Lyon, Kasper found the first[...] Read more

Featured Article STAFF