Winners of Musicworks' 2019 Electronic Music Composition Contest Announced . . . at Last! After a month delay due to challenges presented by the coronavirus pandemic, Musicworks is thrilled to announce the winners of its 2019 Electronic Music Composition Contest. We thank composer entrants for their patience.   Brazilian composer Alex Buck, who is currently based[...] Read more

Featured Article STAFF

Kaïa Kater and the Creative Power of Letting Go Kaïa Kater is a gifted storyteller. Drawn to history, the Montreal-based musician and composer strings together tales that marry the elusive past with an ever-shifting present. From a young age, Kater, who studied cello and piano as a child, found refuge in songwriting. “I didn[...] Read more

Featured Article Chaka V. Grier Issue 150

Buffy Sainte-Marie reflects on Illuminations “God is alive / Magic is afoot / Alive is afoot / Magic never died.”   Those words, written by Leonard Cohen and sung by Buffy Sainte-Marie, open a doorway into the mystical world of Illuminations—one of the most musically beguiling, technologically[...] Read more

Featured Article Jesse Locke Issue 135

Zosha Di Castri is looking for action An eighty-four-foot, mixed-media triptych spans a wall at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. With three huge scrolls, each three feet high, arranged on the wall in three rows, it’s an elaborate montage on a stark, white backdrop. Photographs, texts, drawings, and lithographs make up[...] Read more

Profile Gloria Lipski Issue 114

Mystery & Wonder Records: Extending the Sound A striking musical and visual aesthetic distinguishes Mystery & Wonder Records from other artist-curated labels. The recordings are concise yet complete musical statements. High-definition sound with a lively, in-your-face feel results from microphones placed very close to the[...] Read more

Sound Notes Lawrence Joseph Issue 134

Braids, Grimes, and Doldrums In 1981 in a small town called Dunedin in New Zealand, a trio of young musicians called The Clean, recorded a handful of fuzzy, sloppy pop songs on a four-track Portastudio. For connoisseurs of what is now known as indie-pop, their infectious energy and heartfelt yearning[...] Read more

Featured Article Jonathan Bunce Issue 110

Carmen Braden Raises the Volume on the Subarctic “I'M JUST GOING TO TOUCH IT ON THE TOP," SAYS CARMEN BRADEN, LOOKING AT A BLACKENED PORCUPINE-LIKE LUMP OF ICE. "WHAT I THINK WILL HAPPEN: IT'S JUST GOING TO FALL APART. READY?"   It’s May 2014, and she’s talking to a camera. Her now-[...] Read more

Profile Samia Madwar Issue 126

Erdem Helvacioglu FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY   When you’re caught up in the thick of it, all those cute, clichéd little epithets about turning life’s lemons into lemonade, spinning grave fuck-ups into rapturous inspiration, and the like, hardly seem to hold any[...] Read more

Featured Article Nick Storring Issue 115

Eliza Kavtion’s Call and Response In her spellbinding live show, Montreal-based multi-instrumentalist Eliza Kavtion twists threads from documentary films, punk-rock distortion, and hip-hop innovation together with her wailing, virtuosic guitar playing. She and guitar become one: a fury of fuzzy drones, rhythmic sputters, and[...] Read more

Sound Bite Peggy Hogan Issue 137

Nicolas Bernier and Martin Messier “La chambre des machines is a project where two electronic musicians are driven by the desire to be involved, as physically as they can be, in a performance context,” explains Nicolas Bernier, discussing his ongoing collaborative work with Martin Messier. “It’s not a[...] Read more

Featured Article Julian Cowley Issue 115

Demian Rudel Rey’s "Theophilus" Argentinian composer and guitarist Demian Rudel Rey has received numerous awards and honorable mentions in various national and international composition compstitions, and his pieces have been selected and programmed at prestigious festivals across Europe and the Americas.[...] Read more

Sound Notes STAFF