The Expanding Universe of Yamantaka // Sonic Titan I HAD BEEN GRIPING TO ALASKA B, cofounder of the creative ensemble YAMANTAKA // SONIC TITAN, that Bloordale didn’t have any decent pizza. I’d recently transplanted myself to the Toronto neighbourhood, one of her stomping grounds, and found it discomfiting to not know where to[...] Read more

Featured Article Zack Kotzer Issue 123

Ayelet Rose Gottlieb's Open-Heart Tunings There’s a faint but persistent ringing coming from the southwest corner of Ayelet Rose Gottlieb’s Vancouver apartment. We discover one of her young twins picking purposefully at the keys of a brightly coloured toy piano. The other twin comes over, attracted by this large stranger[...] Read more

Sound Notes Alexander Varty Issue 124

The Mystical Instruments of Walter Smetak In March 2014, I found myself facing the late Walter Smetak’s Pindorama, a seven-foot-two-inch-tall instrument installation comprising seven calabash gourds arranged in a diamond-like formation and resting on a bamboo pedestal. Dozens of clear plastic tubes with flute mouthpieces fixed[...] Read more

Featured Article Neil Leonard Issue 121

Cold Wave A sad-looking polar bear drifts on a shrinking ice sheet in a vast, deep-blue sea under a bright, blue sky. Scenes like this have long been used to illustrate climate change, and they are more than symbolic. Polar regions are warming at more than twice the rate of the rest of the world. The[...] Read more

Featured Article Jonathan Bunce Issue 139

The Material Soundscapes of Roarke Menzies On a Sunday afternoon this past June I visited Outlet Fine Art, one of many independent galleries and performance spaces that have popped up in and around the Brooklyn neighbourhood of Bushwick in recent years. I was there to attend a performance by sound artist Roarke Menzies, the second in[...] Read more

Sound Notes Dan Joseph Issue 126

Jessie Lausé's Movements Jessie Lausé wins second place in the 2021 Musicworks Electronic Music Composition Contest for Movements, a three-movement work for eight-channel mixed media.    “[Movements] explores the melodic and registral capabilities of modified human and spatial[...] Read more

Featured Article

Malcolm Cecil and the History of TONTO THE FOLLOWING STORY WAS PUBLISHED AS PART OF THE SUMMER / FALL 2017 FEATURE "INSIDE THE NATIONAL MUSIC CENTRE."  Malcolm Cecil’s interest in electronics began at age nine, when he became the youngest member of a ham radio club in England. His mother was an accomplished[...] Read more

Featured Article Jesse Locke Issue 128

The Piano and Erhu Project Expands the Repertoire “Let’s begin with a short history of this instrument,” says Nicole Ge Li, in a video shot at the Vancouver offices of the Canadian Music Centre. She’s speaking to a roomful of composers, gathered there to learn more about writing for PEP (Piano and Erhu Project), her[...] Read more

Profile Alexander Varty Issue 127

Cléo Palacio-Quintin “My work as a composer is eminently solitary. I feel like an island, but each island is a world, and in turn I am composed of these many worlds.” This is how Montreal composer, hyper-flute inventor, and performer Cléo Palacio-Quintin describes her work. Introspective and[...] Read more

Profile Richard Simas Issue 109

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 New Sounds of Lebanon The experimental music scene in Beirut, Lebanon, may exist in relative geographic isolation from other global movements of a similar ilk, but over the past fifteen years it has become a dynamic hub for a dense concentration of fiercely independent musical voices. From humble beginnings and[...] Read more

Featured Article Nick Storring Issue 117