What's Inside Musicworks 150 ON THE COVER Maylee Todd                     Maylee Todd has made a practice of embracing everything, especially when it comes to crafting a uniquely weird aesthetic—such as her busy digital avatar Maloo—out of[...] Read more

Featured Article Issue 150

Inside The National Music Centre The Original New Timbral Orchestra, known simply as TONTO, has been called “a synthesizer the size of Nebraska.” The appearance of this electronic monolith makes an immediate impression. Housed in a twenty-foot semicircle of six-foot-tall wooden cabinets with knobs, keyboards,[...] Read more

Featured Article Jesse Locke Issue 128

MUSICWORKS UNVEILS 2017 CONTEST WINNERS Musicworks is thrilled to announce the winners of its 2017 contests.   Erik Ingalls’ The Gravity of Plim has won first place in Musicworks’ 2017 Electronic Music Composition contest. Ingalls’ winning piece began as an accompaniment to a science-fiction[...] Read more

Sound Notes STAFF

Jay Crocker Navigates the Music of Obstacles "THEY WERE EXPECTING TO HAVE A swinging kind of jazz party, but we were doing nothing of the sort that night.” Percussionist Chris Dadge is recalling a particularly memorable gig at the Beat Niq Jazz & Social Club—a trad jazz club in downtown Calgary—during[...] Read more

Featured Article Andrew Patterson Issue 122

Dálava explores the landscape of song On a summer evening, outside this art gallery-cum-coffeehouse somewhere on the Gulf Islands, silver-green alders, not yet dry and summer-drab, sway, as deer graze in a meadow beyond, and small birds sing. Inside, a young couple performs. Julia Ulehla has spurned the venue’s microphone[...] Read more

Featured Article Alexander Varty Issue 128

Reclaiming Chinatown In many respects, the year 2020 was a time of reckoning for Asian Americans. Hot on the heels of the landmark Asian ensemble-cast blockbuster Crazy Rich Asians, South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho made history with Parasite, which took home the first Academy Award for Best Picture ever to be[...] Read more

Featured Article Peggy Hogan Issue 140

Muxubo Mohamed Dares to Represent Compromise? What is compromising? Compromising for what? Compromising for what reason? . . . What is compromise? —Eartha Kitt   That emphatic excerpt from a 1982 documentary is sampled at the start of “He(r)story,” the opening track on[...] Read more

Sound Bite Monica Pearce Issue 131

Linda Bouchard's Murderous Little World FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY   Couple Linda Bouchard’s vision and sound with poet Anne Carson’s texts, engage the talents of a host of collaborators, including extraordinary musicians Guy Few, Joseph Petric, and Eric Vaillancourt, give it all several[...] Read more

In the Works Richard Simas Issue 114

James Rolfe FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY. I first met James Rolfe nearly twenty years ago, when we were finalists in the 1990 edition of the CBC National Radio Competition for Young Composers. As a frequent visitor to Rolfe’s Toronto apartment at that time, I was afforded an insider[...] Read more

Featured Article Chris Paul Harman Issue 105

Maria de Alvear, Rebel By Nature Contradiction is a huge theme in contemporary experimental music. Today’s most potent works situate the listener at hitherto unimaginable thresholds between seemingly irreconcilable points. While many artists use paradoxical scenarios as compositional devices, Spanish-German composer[...] Read more

Featured Article Nick Storring Issue 131

Casey Koyczan Resonates the Future In early July 2020 it was my pleasure to interview Tlicho Dene interdisciplinary artist Casey Koyczan. He is extremely generous and open. I have done my best to represent our conversation in order for readers to discover and understand his creative practices. Focusing on the Northwest[...] Read more

Featured Article Mercedes Webb Issue 137