Featured Articles

What's Inside Musicworks 140? The Fall 2021 issue connects you to music artists of distinctive styles and from distant places with expertly crafted words and carefully chosen images. It is accompanied by a CD of deeply felt, hand-blown music, enhanced with chiselled edges and unusual colours.   IF YOU ARE A[...] Read more

Featured Article STAFF Issue 140

Victor Gama builds a brave new soundworld Wherever Victor Gama plays, you can be sure clusters of people will be jostling to percuss the upturned metal bowls of his tipaw (so called because the surface of the instrument looks like the pads of a tiger paw), to bow the eight metal strings of the tahra, or simply to wander the length[...] Read more

Featured Article Louise Gray Issue 118

Adam Basanta “I’ve always been interested in perception and apperception,” writes Montreal-based composer Adam Basanta in a recent e-mail correspondence. “This has led me, as a musician and composer, to centre my work on listening as a perceptual and psychological experience.[...] Read more

Sound Bite Nick Storring Issue 111

Derek Charke Derek Charke is irresistibly attracted to the North. In 2006 he found himself in the Yukon, dogsledding with the Kronos Quartet. For a composer with a love of the Arctic it doesn’t get better, or more surreal, than this. A few days earlier he had been in a Whitehorse hotel room where[...] Read more

Featured Article WL Altman Issue 113

Jean-Philippe Jullin's Nadir and Diana Lawryshyn's Streams of Consciousness The 2021 Musicworks Electronic Music Composition Contest awarded two artists with honourable mentions: Jean-Philippe Jullin for Nadir and Diana Nadia Lawryshyn for Streams of Consciousness.   JEAN-PHILIPPE JULLIN Born in 1995 in Marseille, France, Jean-Philippe[...] Read more

Featured Article

Ian Battenfield Headley “Working with John Chowning at MusicAcoustica in Beijing was like touching history,” confesses a reverent Ian Battenfield Headley during our Skype call. “I had this image of him being this serious composer who doesn't take time to speak to underlings, but he’s[...] Read more

Sound Bite Jesse Ship Issue 112

Yves Charuest and The Existential Act of Improvisation In the fall of 2016, I attended Montreal rehearsals and concerts and Toronto recording sessions of Roscoe Mitchell and the Toronto-Montreal Art Orchestra for a feature article that was published in Musicworks 127. This complex, largely through-composed music—Mitchell’s[...] Read more

Featured Article Stuart Broomer Issue 141

Emilie LeBel’s Field Notes For many composers, a work in progress comes with strings attached—no pun intended. There are arts councils and concert presenters to satisfy, musicians to liaise with, premiere dates that draw ever closer. Deadlines, of course, can get the juices flowing, and creative constraints ([...] Read more

In the Works Jennie Punter Issue 120

The Apperceptive Musical Adventures of Taylor Brook Canadian composer Taylor Brook—whose music can strike an unusual balance between challenge and charm, sometimes with an astonishing delicacy—had been based since 2011 in New York City, where he was first a doctoral student and then a lecturer at Columbia University, all the while[...] Read more

Profile Kurt Gottschalk Issue 140

Bagpipes Blew My Mind My partner Emily and I moved to Glasgow from Toronto a year ago. The first TV shows we saw included a pipe-band championship and a shepherding competition. Both were brilliant to listen to. We thought that’s what TV was going to be here. It isn’t. And aside from the guys on[...] Read more

Sonic Geography Josh Thorpe Issue 132

Knoxville, Tennessee FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY   As with any American city, the dominant feature of the Knoxville soundscape is the almighty car. With an extension of the interstate zooming only a few blocks from downtown, and a multi-lane surface road separating the University of[...] Read more

Sonic Geography Issue 107

Rings of Beijing I sit staring at the laptop screen in my Beijing hotel room. Writers’ block. Silently trying to formulate words. No sounds enter my consciousness. Only the insistent hum of the laptop. Until my listening body is dropped into a pool of sound. Concentric sonic circles ripple out from the[...] Read more

Sonic Geography Millie Chen Issue 110