Featured Articles

Tom Zé FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY     The romantic Brazil—the one that ensnares tourists—does not include the Brazilian Northeast. Miles from Rio de Janeiro, this place is worlds removed from the urban sophisticates that dwell in the south.[...] Read more

Featured Article Alex Molotkow Issue 105

What's Inside Musicworks 148?   ON THE COVER                Stefana Fratila is a Toronto-based, Romania-born composer and sound designer whose work in sound and love of sci-fi led her to wonder: “If each planet in our solar system were a different room, what[...] Read more

Featured Article STAFF Issue 148

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

Gayle Young's Gentle Interventions In early October 2021 Gayle Young and I meet in Toronto before heading to her home in Ontario’s Niagara region. The drive is less than two hours, yet somehow, our destination is so much further away. The spaces between buildings grow wider as do those between the little squares of light in[...] Read more

Featured Article Sarah Albu Issue 142

Juan Camilo Vásquez’ Calíope (canto de las abejas) YOU DON'T HAVE TO KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT MATHEMATICAL HYPERSURFACES or guitar architecture to enjoy the dense sparkle, relentless energy, and intelligent swarm behaviour of Juan Camilo Vásquez’ Calíope (canto de las abejas) for guitar and electronics—but it[...] Read more

Sound Bite Jennie Punter Issue 124

Trauma of My Mouth In the spring of 2018, Chinese archeologists announced that they’d unearthed a four-thousand-year-old collection of jaw harps (kouxian in Chinese) at the Shimao ruins, a prehistoric site in Shenmu City in northwest China’s Shaanxi Province.   These artifacts,[...] Read more

Featured Article Darcy Spidle Issue 132

Qikiqtaaluk, Nunavut Mount Thor   Sometimes the Arctic sun never goes down, never rises. Today though, in the middle of the Akshayuk Pass, I wake up just before the sunrays reach the thin layer of ice on my tent. It is early, dark, and cold. The wind is tirelessly beating against everything that[...] Read more

Sound Notes Bea Labikova Issue 135

Tomoko Sauvage's Waterbowls Delicate clusters of tones sound and resonate. An orchestration of chimes and drips, they mix to form a potent brew of sullen melodies and serene reverberation. Adrift, immersed, submerged—there are many metaphors one might use to describe a close listening of Clepsydra, the opening[...] Read more

Visions of sound Greg J. Smith Issue 130

St. John’s, Newfoundland It’s July 2001 in St. John’s, Newfoundland—the one-hundredth anniversary of Marconi’s successful reception of transatlantic wireless transmissions on Signal Hill. In town on a visit, I decide to pay homage to the event by hiking up the Harbour Trail to Signal Hill.[...] Read more

Sonic Geography Micheline Roi Issue 106

Giulia Regini's NeOnSound Italian composer Giulia Regini’s NeOnSound is the winner of the 2021 Marcelle Deschênes Prize in Electronic Music, as selected by the jury of Musicworks’ 2021 Electronic Music Composition Contest. “NeOnSound is an audiovisual composition inspired by Dan Flavin's[...] Read more

Sound Notes STAFF

Mariana Vieira’s The Unexpected Encounter with Diversity Electronic music has the potential to free composers and sounds from physical and cultural constraints while also bringing those elements closer together. Composer Mariana Vieira has been exploring ideas in this creative space since her undergraduate studies in composition at Escola Superior[...] Read more

Sound Bite Jennie Punter Issue 143

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