Featured Articles

The Genre of Morgan-Paige Morgan-Paige Melbourne was a child prodigy who started playing piano at three and singing and composing shortly afterwards. Soon she was winning piano competitions, and at sixteen she had her first composition published with SOCAN. It looked like she was heading for a glittering career as a[...] Read more

Sound Bite Mary Dickie Issue 138

FET.NAT’s Post-Punk Palimpsests Around twenty years ago, a post-punk revival was supposedly upon us. Reissue compilations proliferated alongside a crop of new artists who audibly drew from the genre’s heyday. Where punk-rock wedded a rock ethos with rebellious politics (or sometimes just rebellious posturing), post-punk[...] Read more

Profile Nick Storring Issue 136

Sam Shalabi and the Evolution of a Global Aesthetic Sam Shalabi’s insightful musical take on the world can provoke both discomfort and laughter. On his numerous solo albums, he meshes guitar, oud, and field recordings into an electroacoustic collage. He leads a wide variety of small and midsize groups that encompass a who’s who of[...] Read more

Featured Article Lawrence Joseph Issue 130

Audiopollination Seeds Creative Evolution “Two musicians, say, coming together to play a piece of music, I think has to be interesting. Even if the results are not in themselves a great piece of music, the way they find to work with each other says something about music. So you can hear one musician figuring out—you can[...] Read more

Sound Bite Joe Strutt Issue 144

What's Inside Musicworks 142? The authentic enthusiasm and curiosity of artists writing about artists for whom they feel an affinity propelled Musicworks in its early days. This dynamic is in the magazine’s DNA and continues to inform the storytelling in our pages, as you’ll discover in the Summer 2022 issue[...] Read more

Featured Article STAFF Issue 142

Myk Freedman Makes Room for an Ensemble of One (This article was originally published in Spring 2015.)   Myk Freedman is best known as the lap-steel-wielding leader of the nonet St. Dirt Elementary School, whose idiosyncratically tuneful music (released on Rat Drifting and on Barnyard Records) is nestled in the crevice[...] Read more

In the Works Nick Storring Issue 121

Thierry Gauthier FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY   “My artistic evolution,” Thierry Gauthier writes, “has been characterized by the intensity of impulse, immediacy, and the urgency to create; the quest for a paroxysm and the absolute; the same sense of urgency as[...] Read more

Sound Bite Richard Simas Issue 106

Patricia Martinez: Del cuadro a la postergación Listen to Del cuadro a la postergación (1994, acousmatic, stereo) Composed by Patricia Martinez   Composer notes   Del cuadro a la postergación was part of the diptych Espejos de tiempo  / Mirrors of time.[...] Read more

Sound Notes STAFF

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

STEIM FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY     Maybe someone would have been able to guess what I was getting myself into when I left for STEIM in The Netherlands. After all, there was a pretty clear sign. All passengers had boarded the plane, and we all were eager to get to our[...] Read more

Featured Article Glen Hall Issue 109

Ashley Au Is Stretching Out Most music fans in Winnipeg have seen plenty of Ashley Au playing bass in recent years in a wide range of idioms—Americana, hip-hop, jazz, and sludge metal. Pausing to tally current projects, Au counts in blinks before saying, “I’m in an open relationship with maybe seven[...] Read more

Profile Daniel Emberg Issue 139

Fuhong Shi Closes the Distance If Canada has any meaning to most Chinese, it is likely through a widely read essay written by the late Chairman Mao in praise of Dr. Norman Bethune, the Montreal doctor who ministered to Mao’s suffering soldiers during the Long March of the late 1930s.   Musically,[...] Read more

Sound Bite William Littler Issue 117