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

Extermination Music Night It’s quarter past midnight in late May 2008. Storm clouds loom but hold, on this surprisingly humid night. I open the garage, grab my bike and check my backpack: flashlight, five cans of beer, five-dollar donation, notepad and pen. I recheck the instructions I printed from an online[...] Read more

Featured Article Jay Somerset Issue 105

Pheeroan akLaff Pheeroan akLaff believes in drums first, rather than last. He can drive an ensemble forward with the machine-gun attack of his snare and the rolling thunder of his bass and toms, compounding and enriching the music with dense polyrhythms, or using the metallic shimmer of his cymbals to surmount[...] Read more

Featured Article Stuart Broomer Issue 114

Alex Buck’s Screaming Trees Convergence is often the magical force in the creative process that leads to an ear-catching work. Two or more seemingly disparate elements meet in the imagination of an artist who unites them into something new that resonates with both universal and personal meaning. This is the story[...] Read more

Sound Notes Jennie Punter Issue 136

Bekah Simms’ Skinscape and Elliott Lupp’s Hinge Bekah Simms’ Skinscape received an honourable mention from the jury of Musicworks’ 2018 Electronic Music Composition Contest.   Skinscape is a work for flute and fixed media inspired by the transformation of something intimately familiar into something processed[...] Read more

Featured Article STAFF

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 Glittery World of Olivia Shortt Olivia Shortt may not be a household name, but anyone who’s caught one of their eccentric stage performances—either solo or in avant-garde ensembles—has probably not forgotten them. Over the past few years, Shortt has built an enviable résumé. They made their[...] Read more

Featured Article Chaka V. Grier Issue 138

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

Sound Bite Sara Constant Issue 128

Tenzier: History Outside the Margins “There’s a group of students who used a term I really liked: countermemory,” Tenzier founder Eric Fillion tells me over Skype from Montreal. “I almost like that better than counterculture.” He’s talking about Tenzier, the avant-garde label which has put[...] Read more

Sound Bite Kristel Jax Issue 124

What's Inside Musicworks 137? The Fall 2020 issue comes preloaded with guitars. Hollow, heavy, bowed, cracked, pedalled, flung. Trusty companions. Feedback demons. Easy to pick up, hard to put down . . . just like every issue of Musicworks! BUY THE FALL 2020 ISSUE FROM OUR SHOP OR SAVE 50% OFF THE COVER PRICE WITH A[...] Read more

Featured Article Issue 137

The Unsung Songbooks of Dave Burrell TO SAY THAT PIANIST, COMPOSER, AND—AT THIS POINT—JAZZ ELDER DAVE BURRELL WAS NOT made for these times is a bit of a shortsighted claim. Burrell is a jazz classicist preceded by a reputation for free improvisation. He was present for the fabled Parisian Summer of 1969, when[...] Read more

Sound Notes Kurt Gottschalk Issue 122