What's Inside Musicworks 135? The artists in the Winter 2019 issue are connected through the sonic mycelium of Musicworks! Order the Winter issue now.     Buffy Sainte-Marie's Illuminations   Buffy Sainte-Marie’s Illuminations is one of the most sonically[...] Read more

Featured Article Issue 135

Quatuor Bozzini Quatuor Bozzini is poetry, sweat, talent, idealism, determination, love, survival, fate, and a wonderful wild dance with the spirits. For fifteen years, the Montreal ensemble has steadfastly explored the notion of what contemporary music means today. The players are irrepressible creators[...] Read more

Profile Richard Simas Issue 118

Barry Truax With a friendly disposition and unassuming personality, Barry Truax would hardly be thought of as a trailblazing radical. But this soft-spoken composer and teacher is a groundbreaking Canadian icon. Not only did Truax pioneer granular synthesis with the PODX computer music system, he is viewed[...] Read more

Featured Article Jerry Pergolesi Issue 108

Understory’s Sonic Ecosystem Like many performing musicians, I considered leaving the music business in 2020. The confluence of loss of work due to the pandemic, exhaustion from years of gig-hustling, and the intensity of social, political, and environmental crises left me wanting to help directly (on good days) or hide[...] Read more

Featured Article Jennifer Thiessen Issue 140

Matthew Cardinal’s Asterisms Asterisms, Matthew Cardinal’s debut solo album, creates audial desire paths, not necessarily conjuring anything concrete in my mind’s eye but moving like a current—or a river—that I’m compelled to be swept up in. Asterisms is a pleasure to listen to, and I’ve[...] Read more

Sound Bite Mercedes Webb Issue 138

Nicole Lizée I asked Nicole Lizée, newly commissioned to compose a work to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of John Cage’s birth, if she has ever before composed with that iconic artist in mind. How could she not? She is, after all, known for her nonstandard use of instruments, prepared[...] Read more

In the Works Gloria Lipski Issue 112

SlowPitch's "Emoralis" On a rainy April evening in Toronto, in the darkened hush of historic St. Anne’s Anglican Church, the first frame of the 2013 Images Festival appear—a live black-and-white projection of the deft hands of turntable artist SlowPitch. As the frames progress, you can literally hear[...] Read more

Visions of sound Jennie Punter Issue 116

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

The Creative Constructions of George Lewis “THIS PIECE HAS A NEW NAME,” ANNOUNCED GEORGE LEWIS, composer, trombonist, writer, and professor, speaking from the stage of the Community Church of New York. “I realized as I got into it that the old name—the name you have in your programs—doesn’t[...] Read more

Featured Article Kurt Gottschalk Issue 124

Suddenly Listen Expands its Chamber Space Trust. Vulnerability. Flexibility. Holistic listening. Non-hierarchical cooperation. Embrace of the unknown. Sense of adventure. These are some of the themes that arise when considering improvised music. If you have ever attended a concert of free-improvised music, you might have experienced[...] Read more

Featured Article Monica Pearce Issue 138