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

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

The Ratchet Orchestra In 1961, a virtually unknown African-American band was stranded in Montreal before going on to more promising territory. During their months in Montreal they would build up a local following, mostly musicians, who could hear that something different was going on. It’s a slight and[...] Read more

Profile Stuart Broomer Issue 115

What's Inside Musicworks 143? Settle into an autumnal groove with our Fall 2022 issue and direct your curious ears toward new aesthetic coordinates. ORDER YOUR PHYSICAL COPY OF MUSICWORKS 143 FROM OUR SHOP. or SUPPORT MUSICWORKS, A REGISTERED NON-PROFIT, WITH AN ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION.   ON[...] Read more

Featured Article STAFF Issue 143

Listening as Territory “I grew up in a tiny village in the North Yorkshire Moors,” explains British sound artist Mark Peter Wright. “I was always outdoors, and I collected anything and everything: stones, feathers, empty shotgun cartridges.” Now in his early thirties and based in London,[...] Read more

Sound Bite Julian Cowley Issue 114

Susan Alcorn’s Vibrant Deviations Susan Alcorn moves through life in methodical motion, a few beats slower than the usual rapid flow. At the 2020 edition of Toronto’s Women From Space festival, held in mid March, the pedal steel guitarist’s entrancing performance made the Burdock Tavern feel as if clocks had frozen[...] Read more

Featured Article Jesse Locke Issue 137

Announcing the Winners of the 2022 Musicworks Electronic Music Composition Contest TORONTO, CANADA, April 20, 2023: Musicworks is thrilled to announce the winners of the 2022 Musicworks Electronic Music Composition Contest.   American composer, sound artist, and educator Leah Reid (left) has won first prize with her composition Reverie. “I am[...] Read more

Sound Notes STAFF

Thomas, Farah, and D’Eon I’m sitting with Thom Gill and we’re talking about his most recent EP Such Is Your Triumph, arguably his most intimate and personal set of recordings to date. In addition to his beautifully hushed and harmonically inventive takes on two gospel songs made famous by the Clark[...] Read more

Featured Article Nick Storring Issue 112

Caduc The word caduc translates from French as both obsolete and deciduous. Appropriately, the roster of Mathieu Ruhlmann’s humble Vancouver imprint, Caduc, plays right at the intersection of the organic world and senescent technology.   Since late 2011, Caduc has built[...] Read more

Sound Notes Nick Storring Issue 119

Cage And Duchamp's Reunion FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY   On the periphery of the dimly lit stage of Toronto’s Ryerson Theatre, four musicians are setting up musical instruments, laptops, and various musical gadgets in preparation for the evening’s all-night performance. Audio[...] Read more

Profile Chris Kennedy Issue 111

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

Colin Stetson's Sound Story Stories in which the protagonist blossoms, finds themselves, or rediscovers their roots appear everywhere. Their ubiquity makes it awfully tempting to replicate this narrative when telling the story of a solo artist who has arrived at a uniquely focused sound world. Yet sometimes it’s more[...] Read more

Featured Article Nick Storring Issue 116