Featured Articles
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
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
Hyposurface FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY On a 2004 visit to the MIT Media Lab, I encountered a small, flat wall with a skin of silver luminescent triangles covering a background of cables and metal frame. My host, the creator of Hyposurface, Mark Goulthorpe (dECOi Architects[...] Read more
New Age Music—The Second Wave I’m lying on the living-room floor. I’ve been like this for two hours, on my back, in the dark, headphones on. The record on the turntable is literally locked in its groove and producing a low-note drone that at times sounds like a whale’s moan or some sort of detuned,[...] Read more
Tim Hecker It’s a sensation particular to staying up all night—that in-between place on the cusp of complete exhaustion and utter lucidity, where fatigue and receptivity somehow reach a simultaneous peak. No longer fighting to stay awake, you’re charged with a directionless urgency,[...] Read more
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
2023 Musicworks Electronic Music Composition Contest For immediate release: Toronto, Canada, August 1, 2023 — The thirteenth annual Musicworks Electronic Music Composition Contest opens August 1, 2023. We invite you to share the news with your readers, audiences, and communities. [...] Read more
Bekah Simms’ Music of Discomfort Bekah Simms likes music that challenges. “I don't want to ever get too comfortable,” she tells me, as we sit down to talk about her work. “I don’t want it ever to be super easy to write a piece, because I feel like then I won’t be a better composer when I[...] Read more
Victor Gama builds a brave new soundworld Wherever Victor Gama plays, you can be sure clusters of people will be jostling to percuss the upturned metal bowls of his tipaw (so called because the surface of the instrument looks like the pads of a tiger paw), to bow the eight metal strings of the tahra, or simply to wander the length[...] Read more
Backxwash—The Healing Music of Productive Rage If you want to win over rapper and producer Backxwash (Ashanti Mutinta), start a conversation with her by talking about the outlier sounds of American rapper–producers Missy Elliot and Timbaland. I’m speaking with her a couple of days after she fired up[...] Read more
Manuella Blackburn’s Home Truths U.K. composer Manuella Blackburn’s composition Home Truths won the Marcelle Deschênes Prize in Electronic Music in the 2023 Musicworks Electronic Music Composition (EMC) Contest. This donor-supported annual prize awards $300 to a self-identified female or non-binary composer with[...] Read more
Linda Catlin Smith Lets In the Light It’s 2004. I am taking my first composition course at Mount Allison University. I have recently become enamoured of new music and am catching up on a long list of listening in the basement of the Alfred Whitehead Memorial Music Library. I come across Memory Forms (2001), a[...] Read more
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