Jessica McMann Brings the Music Home While some creative people have been struggling to fill their time over the course of the pandemic, Cree dancer and musician Jessica McMann, who is a member of Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan—has been busy. But with powwows and in-person contemporary dance performances on pause[...] Read more

Sound Bite Elizabeth Chorney-Booth Issue 141

Gordan Monahan Gordon Monahan’s voice floats to me across the Internet from his farm, the Funny Farm, his home base in Meaford, Ontario.   Monahan was recently awarded a 2013 Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts, and is already planning a series of installations for 2013,[...] Read more

In the Works David McCallum Issue 116

Thomas, Farah, and D’Eon I’m sitting with Thom Gill and we’re talking about his most recent EP Such Is Your Triumph, arguably his most intimate and personal set of recordings to date. In addition to his beautifully hushed and harmonically inventive takes on two gospel songs made famous by the Clark[...] Read more

Featured Article Nick Storring Issue 112

What's Inside Musicworks 136? The Spring 2020 issue is a one-stop, one-of-a-kind sonic journey. Most of the stories were assigned, written, and edited before the lockdown, due to the global COVID-19 health crisis, took hold. Events referred to or advertised in this issue were not yet cancelled at press time but likely[...] Read more

Featured Article Issue 136

Nicolas Bernier and Martin Messier “La chambre des machines is a project where two electronic musicians are driven by the desire to be involved, as physically as they can be, in a performance context,” explains Nicolas Bernier, discussing his ongoing collaborative work with Martin Messier. “It’s not a[...] Read more

Featured Article Julian Cowley Issue 115

Christopher Mayo In 2005, Christopher Mayo had a summer that unexpectedly changed his approach to composing. The Toronto-born composer spent three weeks at the Bang on a Can Summer Music Institute in North Adams, Massachusetts, where he came into contact with composers Michael Gordon, David Lang, Julia Wolfe[...] Read more

Featured Article Julian Cowley Issue 110

Muxubo Mohamed Dares to Represent Compromise? What is compromising? Compromising for what? Compromising for what reason? . . . What is compromise? —Eartha Kitt   That emphatic excerpt from a 1982 documentary is sampled at the start of “He(r)story,” the opening track on[...] Read more

Sound Bite Monica Pearce Issue 131

Music from the New Wilderness What can sound tell us about a place? Listen to British Columbia, and it might sound something like Music from the New Wilderness, a multimedia performance work that conjures B.C.’s past and evolving present by incorporating historical and current field recordings into new compositions[...] Read more

In the Works Nancy Lanthier Issue 118

Yves Charuest and The Existential Act of Improvisation In the fall of 2016, I attended Montreal rehearsals and concerts and Toronto recording sessions of Roscoe Mitchell and the Toronto-Montreal Art Orchestra for a feature article that was published in Musicworks 127. This complex, largely through-composed music—Mitchell’s[...] Read more

Featured Article Stuart Broomer Issue 141

What's Inside Musicworks 142? The authentic enthusiasm and curiosity of artists writing about artists for whom they feel an affinity propelled Musicworks in its early days. This dynamic is in the magazine’s DNA and continues to inform the storytelling in our pages, as you’ll discover in the Summer 2022 issue[...] Read more

Featured Article STAFF Issue 142

Jörg Piringer's Sound Poetry App FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY   The iPod touch is hissing loudly as two s’s move about the screen leaving a trail of fading s shapes in their wake. I drag the image of an r onto the screen with my finger, wanting to hear what effect that will have on the[...] Read more

Visions of sound Micheline Roi Issue 110