Featured Articles

Lisbon, Portugal FULL TEXT AVAILABLE ONLY IN PRINT EDITION   A wolfman wanders Lisbon’s Praça do Comercio, the broad public square facing the Tagus River estuary leading to the sea. It is nearly midnight. He is bearded, shirtless, and his bare feet slap the calçadas, the[...] Read more

Sonic Geography Richard Simas Issue 116

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

Musicworks' 2017 Summer Festival Preview Some of my most cherished experiences happened at summer music festivals—from scanning the schedules and planning the road trips to meeting new friends and, of course, identifying new musicians and artists. Here at Musicworks, we’re discovering more must-see festivals and events[...] Read more

Sound Notes

Chiyoko Szlavnics draws the ear towards infinity “I keep coming back to light on water,” says Chiyoko Szlavnics, explaining her interest in beating, that intriguing fluttering effect that arises when sound waves of slightly differing frequencies coincide. “It’s a very similar kind of synaptic experience—for me[...] Read more

Featured Article Julian Cowley Issue 119

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

Tristan Perich’s 1-Bit Symphony Tristan Perich’s 1-Bit Symphony (2009–10) is an electronic composition in five movements on a single microchip housed in a CD jewel case. 1-Bit Symphony is not a recording in the traditional sense; it is a complete electronic circuit that literally performs its music once it is[...] Read more

Visions of sound Tristan Perich Issue 109

What's Inside Musicworks 130 - Spring 2018 Musicworks turns 40 this year. It’s been quite a journey from the DIY newsprint tabloid published in 1978 to Musicworks 130—our first-ever full-colour issue! Buy the print issue (or print+CD combo) from our shop, or start your subscription today. On the Cover[...] Read more

Featured Article Issue 130

What's Inside Musicworks 140? The Fall 2021 issue connects you to music artists of distinctive styles and from distant places with expertly crafted words and carefully chosen images. It is accompanied by a CD of deeply felt, hand-blown music, enhanced with chiselled edges and unusual colours.   IF YOU ARE A[...] Read more

Featured Article STAFF Issue 140

Jean Derome’s Reflections of Joy Over the past four decades, Jean Derome’s musical interests have spanned everything from standards to skronk. He has composed graphic scores for large ensembles, created multimedia works for string quartets, and devised music for dance, theatre, and cinema works. But what Derome is[...] Read more

Featured Article Lawrence Joseph Issue 121

Ana Sokolović wants you to enjoy her imagination “Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms / Inside your head, and people in them, acting.”   These lines from “The Old Fools,” English postwar poet Philip Larkin’s fearsome ode to aging, sparked Montreal composer Ana Sokolović’s full-[...] Read more

Featured Article Holly Harris Issue 134

Olivia Block FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY     The sound of a clarinet passage emerges from a quiet section and is punctuated by a series of minute electronic tones. Accompanying the clarinet is a recording of the wind, but the sound is more than just that of a rush of wind; it is[...] Read more

Featured Article Chris Kennedy Issue 112

The Ondes Martenot is Making New Waves No one knows exactly how many functioning ondes Martenot are in use around the world today, but an informed, conservative estimate puts their number at sixty. In the course of half a century, Maurice Martenot, the creator of this most sensitive electronic musical instrument, was able to[...] Read more

Featured Article Caroline Martel Issue 117