Charlie Morrow, Sonic Nomad  “My work is what it is and I move in many worlds. I would have nothing except for being carried on the shoulders of friendship and shared interest.”   Intrepid sonic investigator Charlie Morrow’s early-’90s Lower East Side event, Urban[...] Read more

Featured Article Bart Plantenga Issue 134

The Spatial Sonic Designs of Juro Kim Feliz Genres can be compared to landscapes: they are places where people gawk like tourists, set up camp on Spotify playlists, and explore musical structures. Juro Kim Feliz sat down with me in November 2021 to talk about the challenges of creating in both the Filipino and the Canadian[...] Read more

Sound Bite Rachel Evangeline Chiong Issue 141

Maria de Alvear, Rebel By Nature Contradiction is a huge theme in contemporary experimental music. Today’s most potent works situate the listener at hitherto unimaginable thresholds between seemingly irreconcilable points. While many artists use paradoxical scenarios as compositional devices, Spanish-German composer[...] Read more

Featured Article Nick Storring Issue 131

David Berezan's Tongue Drum Third place in the 2021 Musicworks Electronic Music Composition Contest was awarded to U.K.-based composer David Berezan's Tongue Drum.   The piece premiered online in May 2021 at the European Art Science Technology Network for Digital Creativity (EASTN-DC) in Corfu[...] Read more

Featured Article

Tom Zé FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY     The romantic Brazil—the one that ensnares tourists—does not include the Brazilian Northeast. Miles from Rio de Janeiro, this place is worlds removed from the urban sophisticates that dwell in the south.[...] Read more

Featured Article Alex Molotkow Issue 105

The Many Trajectories of Erin Rogers Erin Rogers and Dennis Sullivan are facing each other on the stage of Manhattan’s Le Poisson Rouge in late February of 2020, a small table of gear between them. They take turns triggering samples of sportscasters by pounding large, illuminated buttons as if playing bare-knuckle Whac-a-[...] Read more

Profile Kurt Gottschalk Issue 136

Sarah Neufeld: Solo Violin, Guerrilla-Style “I COULDN'T EVEN PLAY A NOTE. If you even breathe, your breath becomes this crazy, feathery freight train of echo.”   Sarah Neufeld recalls her first visit to Devil’s Mountain with a mixture of fear and delight. The site of an abandoned array of[...] Read more

Profile Jonathan Bunce Issue 117

Gong Punks and Culture Bombs Gentle and intense, soothing and exhilarating, traditional Filipino kulintang music provides the kind of richly immersive experience that makes an hour go by in what seems like a minute. The intertwining, hypnotic rhythms of its gongs and drums rise and fall as the players change tempos and[...] Read more

Featured Article Mary Dickie Issue 128

First-place winner, Musicworks’ 2017 Electronic Music Composition contest The glitchy, vaguely dystopian composition constructed from manipulated vocals is almost widespread enough now to warrant its own genre tag. Laurie Anderson is, of course, its foremother. Recent interesting entries include Holly Herndon’s Platform, Katie Gately’s Pipes, and Giant[...] Read more

Sound Bite Daniel Glassman Issue 130

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

Roxanne Nesbitt’s Sonic Investigations People often describe sound as something that reverberates outward into space, but the music of interdisciplinary artist Roxanne Nesbitt seems to move inward; it has an audiovisual geometry that focuses the eye and the ear, pulling you closer to the source. To perform her 2010 composition[...] Read more

Featured Article Sara Constant Issue 141