Featured Articles

Sarah Peeble`s Audio Bee Booth FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY   Pollination Wunder Station is a wunderkammer—cabinet of curiosities—full of fascinating living things. The piece is part habitat interpretation, part bio art, part sound installation, and part sculpture. It is one in a[...] Read more

Visions of sound Sarah Peebles Issue 111

Plumes Deconstructs Grimes Many Visions: Plumes Deconstructs the Music of Grimes is a genre-spanning music collaboration that seeks to explore and ultimately blur the lines between classical and pop. Thirteen contemporary classical composers have been asked to reimagine and rework the thirteen tracks on Grimes’[...] Read more

In the Works Mary Dickie Issue 126

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

Malcolm Cecil and the History of TONTO THE FOLLOWING STORY WAS PUBLISHED AS PART OF THE SUMMER / FALL 2017 FEATURE "INSIDE THE NATIONAL MUSIC CENTRE."  Malcolm Cecil’s interest in electronics began at age nine, when he became the youngest member of a ham radio club in England. His mother was an accomplished[...] Read more

Featured Article Jesse Locke Issue 128

Chroma Mixed Media's Water Water, the second-place winner of Musicworks' 2018 Electronic Music Composition Contest, is a multimedia performance piece structured around changing states of water. It was composed collaboratively by three members of Chroma Mixed Media for a performance with the Co.Crea.Tive[...] Read more

Sound Notes STAFF

Milan FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY   A sonic spectre is haunting Milan’s music scene. That ghostly presence is Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901), Italy’s best-known composer of romantic operas, who moved to the city when young, shot to fame with Nabucco in 1842[...] Read more

Sonic Geography Ken Waxman Issue 105

The Warp and Weft of Kelly Ruth In the history of musical instruments, the questions asked are pretty standard: Who played it? What did they play? How did it evolve? Kelly Ruth’s instrument, the weaving loom, carries an entirely different kind of history. It brings to mind mythology, solitary artisans, beautiful[...] Read more

Featured Article Ian Crutchley Issue 130

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

Tosca Terán Has a Brand New Spawn Bag The lobby is cavernous and cool compared to the heat under the blazing mid-afternoon sun outside. It’s mid July, and I’m visiting Toronto’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) on a decidedly peculiar mission: to listen to music made by fungus. As part of the seventh edition[...] Read more

Featured Article Greg J. Smith Issue 135

Jairus Sharif and the Expression of Truth Jairus Sharif believes in the transformative power of music. On his debut album, Water & Tools, the thirty-three-year-old multi-instrumentalist constructs dense, impassioned improvisations that fuse the murky beatscapes of underground hip-hop with the scorching intensity of free jazz.[...] Read more

Sound Bite Jesse Locke Issue 144

What's Inside Musicworks 141? The Winter 2021/22 issue explores the creative ideas of seven artists who are engaged in beautiful, daring musical acts of innovation, celebration, and resistance . . . artists that audiences and listeners like YOU will be discovering in 2022.   Flute enthusiasts, please note that[...] Read more

Featured Article Issue 141

Ociciwan Contemporary Art Collective: in memoriam . . . Project THE EIGHTH PROJECT initiated by the Edmonton-based Ociciwan Contemporary Art Collective, in memoriam . . . , was nominally about a performance, but soon morphed into a unique achievement of seemingly infinite layers. Its complex genesis, motivations, resonances, and residual impact[...] Read more

Featured Article Ian Crutchley Issue 132