Featured Articles
Buffy Sainte-Marie reflects on Illuminations “God is alive / Magic is afoot / Alive is afoot / Magic never died.” Those words, written by Leonard Cohen and sung by Buffy Sainte-Marie, open a doorway into the mystical world of Illuminations—one of the most musically beguiling, technologically[...] Read more
What's Inside Musicworks 139? ON THE COVER: Evensong (2018) by Lou Sheppard, who recently made the 2021 long list for the prestigious Sobey Art Award. Congratulations Lou! This issue contains a special 30-page section that explores climate emergency through the stories of nine sound and music[...] Read more
Ociciwan Contemporary Art Collective: in memoriam . . . Project THE EIGHTH PROJECT initiated by the Edmonton-based Ociciwan Contemporary Art Collective, in memoriam . . . , was nominally about a performance, but soon morphed into a unique achievement of seemingly infinite layers. Its complex genesis, motivations, resonances, and residual impact[...] Read more
Nico Muhly “Rules in cooking are not iron-cast (and, as in any medium of expression, they are often bent or broken by practitioners of talent—but to break rules, one must have rules). They are merely the expression of a well of experience formed and enriched over the centuries, re-[...] Read more
Label Profile: Redshift Records We won’t go into the details—because, frankly, we don’t understand them—but in astronomy a redshift is a way to measure an object’s placement in space, and its movement vis-à-vis the earth. “It’s like the Doppler effect, but[...] Read more
The Warp and Weft of Kelly Ruth In the history of musical instruments, the questions asked are pretty standard: Who played it? What did they play? How did it evolve? Kelly Ruth’s instrument, the weaving loom, carries an entirely different kind of history. It brings to mind mythology, solitary artisans, beautiful[...] Read more
The Tao of Gayle Last year in mid October, while scrolling down Facebook, I came across a densely expressive and evocatively written post from Montreal singer Sarah Albu, who was “surfacing momentarily,” she wrote, from a recording project “revisiting, revising, and recording” the[...] Read more
Joseph Shabason’s patient unravelling When we listen to music, are we meant to enter the hearts and minds of those who’ve created it? Or is listening more of an interior experience—of turning inwards and creating space to experience our own feelings? For Joseph Shabason, the answer to both questions is yes.[...] Read more
Jessie Lausé's Movements Jessie Lausé wins second place in the 2021 Musicworks Electronic Music Composition Contest for Movements, a three-movement work for eight-channel mixed media. “[Movements] explores the melodic and registral capabilities of modified human and spatial[...] Read more
The Apperceptive Musical Adventures of Taylor Brook Canadian composer Taylor Brook—whose music can strike an unusual balance between challenge and charm, sometimes with an astonishing delicacy—had been based since 2011 in New York City, where he was first a doctoral student and then a lecturer at Columbia University, all the while[...] Read more
Neither Here Nor There: Musical Identity in the Global Flow It is impossible to stand still nowadays in the face of worldwide security concerns. With climate change, wars, oppressive political climates, and alarming epidemics, the ability to move around physically has become a humanitarian necessity for many. The commodification and hyperrealism of[...] Read more
Fuhong Shi Closes the Distance If Canada has any meaning to most Chinese, it is likely through a widely read essay written by the late Chairman Mao in praise of Dr. Norman Bethune, the Montreal doctor who ministered to Mao’s suffering soldiers during the Long March of the late 1930s. Musically,[...] Read more
- 21 of 34
- « first
- ‹ previous
- next ›
- last »