Featured Articles

Giulia Regini's NeOnSound Italian composer Giulia Regini’s NeOnSound is the winner of the 2021 Marcelle Deschênes Prize in Electronic Music, as selected by the jury of Musicworks’ 2021 Electronic Music Composition Contest. “NeOnSound is an audiovisual composition inspired by Dan Flavin's[...] Read more

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Eldad Tsabary FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY   Israeli-Canadian composer Eldad Tsabary is omnivorous when it comes to digesting various influences, both musical and otherwise. With strong ties to Montreal’s electroacoustic scene, and as a lecturer in Concordia University[...] Read more

In the Works Nick Storring Issue 108

Markus Floats' Motion Emotion How do you think and write about sound outside of metaphor? Is music necessarily tethered to other aspects of our sensuous and interior lives? Or can we appreciate its meaning more essentially—as energy and dynamics, waves and reverberation? These questions come up around the work of[...] Read more

Featured Article Brennan McCracken Issue 137

Chiyoko Szlavnics draws the ear towards infinity “I keep coming back to light on water,” says Chiyoko Szlavnics, explaining her interest in beating, that intriguing fluttering effect that arises when sound waves of slightly differing frequencies coincide. “It’s a very similar kind of synaptic experience—for me[...] Read more

Featured Article Julian Cowley Issue 119

Burden Unpacks the Piano's Inner Life At the 2016 Winnipeg New Music Festival, the members of Burden and their synecdochical piano are set up in the midst of a noisy, beer-swilling crowd at Union Sound Hall. Without so much as a word of introduction to attract attention, they assume positions on three sides of the piano and[...] Read more

Featured Article Daniel Emberg Issue 125

Rebecca Bruton Lets The World In Rebecca Bruton describes her work as an “understated, Surrealist folk music”—music that’s experimental but also simple, with a sensuousness and a weirdness to it. “Music that makes sense,” she says, “but you’re not sure why.”[...] Read more

In the Works Sara Constant Issue 129

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

Senyawa plays the music of the universe On a chilly, rainy Thursday May night, a crowd of sixty or so people, spread unevenly around the pews of Halifax’s Fort Massey United Church, is waiting. OBEY Convention creative director Andrew Patterson has just introduced Indonesian “doom folk” duo Senyawa, but after the[...] Read more

Sound Bite Daniel Glassman Issue 128

Gayle Young's Gentle Interventions In early October 2021 Gayle Young and I meet in Toronto before heading to her home in Ontario’s Niagara region. The drive is less than two hours, yet somehow, our destination is so much further away. The spaces between buildings grow wider as do those between the little squares of light in[...] Read more

Featured Article Sarah Albu Issue 142

Eighty-five scores celebrate Pauline Oliveros Still Listening: New Works in Honour of Pauline Oliveros (1932-2016) is a project initially conceived to mark Oliveros’ eighty-fifth birthday on May 30, 2017. Eighty-five artists were invited to create eighty-five new compositions, each with a duration of eighty-five seconds. Organized by[...] Read more

In the Works Lawrence Joseph Issue 127

The Sound Future of Virtual Reality I HEAR A PERCUSSIVE THUD. SOMETHING IS HITTING THE FLOOR IN FRONT OF ME REPEATEDLY. It’s reverberating (I’m in a large room, I guess) and the rhythm is punctuated by frenzied bursts of high-pitched squeaks nearby. In the distance, I hear shuffling and the murmur of voices[...] Read more

Featured Article Greg J. Smith Issue 126

Sound It Out! Musicworks' annual guide to festivals and events is a snapshot of the sonic adventures that will play out in Canadian intersections, fields, and venues this spring and summer. Many of our featured artists, contributors, and staff will be on the scene. We're especially eager to tell[...] Read more

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