Featured Articles
What's Inside Musicworks 138? The final issue of 2020 is is dedicated to the art of conversation . . . in music and about music. Unable to practice, perform, or listen to music together in person in a room, music friends have been meeting each other in other kinds of venues—including the pages of Musicworks—to[...] Read more
Kris Davis nurtures new shapes in jazz Kris Davis is working on setting a routine. It’s not an unusual task. It’s one that new mothers all over Brooklyn who work odd hours have to contend with. But it’s a challenge. She’s up at six a.m. every day with her son, who turned one in July 2014. While on new-[...] Read more
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
What's Inside Musicworks 149? ON THE COVER Brendan Grey and the Evolving Ethos of Super Duty Tough Work As Winnipeg hip-hop ensemble Super Duty Tough Work (SDTW) hits the ten-year mark, founder and MC Brendan Grey, sits down with writer Abiola Regan to talk about tapping in to his family’s[...] Read more
Pheeroan akLaff Pheeroan akLaff believes in drums first, rather than last. He can drive an ensemble forward with the machine-gun attack of his snare and the rolling thunder of his bass and toms, compounding and enriching the music with dense polyrhythms, or using the metallic shimmer of his cymbals to surmount[...] Read more
Kamancello explores a new duo dimension “Kamanche means little bow in Kurdish and Farsi,” says Shahriyar Jamshidi, the kamanche player in Kamancello, his Toronto-based duo with cellist Raphael Weinroth-Browne. The pair marry rich lyricism and microtonal ornamentation, influenced by Iranian, classical, and metal musics[...] Read more
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
Amanda Dawn Christie’s Requiem for Radio In 2012 the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) began to tear down its Radio-Canada International towers in Sackville, New Brunswick (home to some 6,000 people and best known as the locale of the beloved SappyFest). The dismantling of the towers wasn’t just another chapter in the[...] Read more
The Musical Worldview of Nick Dourado IT'S A DREARY WINTER NIGHT IN TORONTO. It’s already super late—the last of four bands has already played, and the makeshift bar within the makeshift venue has been closed for a good half hour. Although things are winding down, a healthy crowd is hanging out, chatting, and[...] Read more
The Passion and Curiosity of Barbara Hannigan “An absolute stroke of luck for opera” is just one of the countless accolades Canadian-born, Amsterdam-based soprano Barbara Hannigan has received for her performances of both classical and contemporary music. Composers and musicians she has worked with are unanimous in their[...] Read more
Lido Pimienta curates a sonic community Colombia-born, Toronto-based Lido Pimienta has been called “the consummate collaborator”—and with good reason. Although she writes, sings, produces, and plays many instruments—and is certainly talented and strong-willed enough to make recordings on her own—[...] Read more
Eldad Tsabary FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY Israeli-Canadian composer Eldad Tsabary is omnivorous when it comes to digesting various influences, both musical and otherwise. With strong ties to Montreal’s electroacoustic scene, and as a lecturer in Concordia University[...] Read more
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