The Friendly Exchanges of Germaine Liu When percussionist Germaine Liu performs, there’s more to her approach than simply striking a snare drum with a wooden stick.   Liu seeks a deeper intimacy with her instruments, exploring all the sounds they might produce by closely examining each part. This is the key[...] Read more

Sound Bite Mary Dickie Issue 123

Jörg Piringer's Sound Poetry App FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY   The iPod touch is hissing loudly as two s’s move about the screen leaving a trail of fading s shapes in their wake. I drag the image of an r onto the screen with my finger, wanting to hear what effect that will have on the[...] Read more

Visions of sound Micheline Roi Issue 110

Louis Andriessen brings the noise Louis Andriessen arrived on the international scene with a bang. In 1976 he unleashed De Staat (The Republic) on unsuspecting audiences. The political charge of the composition came from texts of Plato sung by four soprano voices hovering like ethereal apparitions over pounding, iron-fisted[...] Read more

Featured Article René van Peer Issue 119

Bug Incision: Calgary’s Cross-Pollination Buzz The world of free improvisation is like a parallel universe, a global underground community of nonidiomatic soundmakers, recording with each other in every imaginable permutation, connected via a proliferation of text- and link-heavy Web 1.0 sites, DIY venues, and CD-R labels, with a[...] Read more

Sound Bite Daniel Glassman Issue 131

Timothy Roy’s “dans les dents de la guivre” Saint Paul, Minnesota-based composer Timothy Roy’s “dans les dents de la guivre” was awarded second place in the 2023 Musicworks Electronic Music Composition Contest.   Format: Binaural Stereo . . . please listen with headphones!  [...] Read more

Featured Article STAFF

Giorgio Magnanensi in the Sonic Playground Admirers of Giorgio Magnanensi—composer, conductor, teacher, and the artistic director of Vancouver New Music Society—tend to be lavish in their praise of him. “Giorgio is singularly the best conductor of modern music, period,” says composer and Capilano University[...] Read more

Featured Article Nancy Lanthier Issue 117

Ashley Au Is Stretching Out Most music fans in Winnipeg have seen plenty of Ashley Au playing bass in recent years in a wide range of idioms—Americana, hip-hop, jazz, and sludge metal. Pausing to tally current projects, Au counts in blinks before saying, “I’m in an open relationship with maybe seven[...] Read more

Profile Daniel Emberg Issue 139

The Restless Sonic Architecture of William Kuo Adjudicating applications for an emerging-composer program is a sort of high-volume evaluation scenario that necessitates a concentrated mode of listening in order to provide fair and sufficiently individualized appraisals. But every so often, you come across a candidate whose music is so[...] Read more

Featured Article Nick Storring Issue 134

FET.NAT’s Post-Punk Palimpsests Around twenty years ago, a post-punk revival was supposedly upon us. Reissue compilations proliferated alongside a crop of new artists who audibly drew from the genre’s heyday. Where punk-rock wedded a rock ethos with rebellious politics (or sometimes just rebellious posturing), post-punk[...] Read more

Profile Nick Storring Issue 136

What's Inside Musicworks 144? Cozy up with the Winter 2022–23 issue and discover new pathways of sonic connectivity!   ON THE COVER: SLOWPITCHSOUND With roots in turntablism that extend into the likes of classical composition, sound design, and theatre, Toronto-based artist and musician[...] Read more

Featured Article Issue 144