Featured Articles

Christine Duncan Unleashes the Elements IT ALL CAME BACK SO FAST: the Whip, the Punch, the Elements. All those gestures unlocked my voice and made it respond exactly as it was supposed to—even after a five-year absence.   Late last year, I embedded myself with the Element Choir, the world’s leading[...] Read more

Featured Article Jonathan Bunce Issue 124

Suddenly Listen Expands its Chamber Space Trust. Vulnerability. Flexibility. Holistic listening. Non-hierarchical cooperation. Embrace of the unknown. Sense of adventure. These are some of the themes that arise when considering improvised music. If you have ever attended a concert of free-improvised music, you might have experienced[...] Read more

Featured Article Monica Pearce Issue 138

Charles Stankievech FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY     Some time ago, a friend and I were talking outside a gallery, when suddenly we saw a bright green object sear through the night sky. Assuming it to be a stray firework, we waited for the expected explosion and crackles. We waited and[...] Read more

Featured Article Laura Paolini Issue 106

Sarah Hennies, Linguist in the Land of Noises Identity is a deeply personal, elusive, and complex thing, and thus, a common source of creative fuel. Yet for the endless variety of discrete identities and individual perspectives on the topic, there is a dominant set of tropes around the way that identity is addressed artistically. The[...] Read more

Featured Article Nick Storring Issue 130

Nico Muhly “Rules in cooking are not iron-cast (and, as in any medium of expression, they are often bent or broken by practitioners of talent—but to break rules, one must have rules). They are merely the expression of a well of experience formed and enriched over the centuries, re-[...] Read more

Featured Article Julian Cowley Issue 111

Meet the Winners of the 2024 Musicworks Electronic Music Composition Contest TORONTO, CANADA, May 29, 2025:   Musicworks is pleased to announce that Lyon-based composer Rocío Cano Valiño (photo by © Deni Ríos) has won first prize in the 2024 Musicworks Electronic Music Composition Contest for her stereo electroacoustic[...] Read more

Featured Article STAFF

What's Inside Musicworks 131 - Fall 2018 Musicworks 131 is the second issue of our 40th anniversary year, featuring artists who are active in interarts, DIY culture, collaborative composing, and more! Buy the print issue (or print + CD combo!) from our shop or start your subscription with the Fall 2018 issue.  ON THE COVER[...] Read more

Featured Article Issue 131

The Idiosyncratic Musicality of Marc Sabat The emergence of Arnold Schoenberg’s twelve-tone technique in the early 1920s not only presented an altogether new conception of pitch in music, it also prompted a dramatic and widespread shift in the fundamental thinking surrounding Western concert music. Its latent quasiscientific[...] Read more

Featured Article Nick Storring Issue 125

Tristan Perich’s 1-Bit Symphony Tristan Perich’s 1-Bit Symphony (2009–10) is an electronic composition in five movements on a single microchip housed in a CD jewel case. 1-Bit Symphony is not a recording in the traditional sense; it is a complete electronic circuit that literally performs its music once it is[...] Read more

Visions of sound Tristan Perich Issue 109

Christine Sun Kim Explores the Politics of Sound “Low frequencies just being abstract and shit — High frequencies be like anal and micromanaging for no good reason — Silence oblivious as ever”   These words are handwritten in a drawing that was included in an exhibition of new works by[...] Read more

Sound Notes Christopher Willes Issue 123

Winners of Musicworks' 2019 Electronic Music Composition Contest Announced . . . at Last! After a month delay due to challenges presented by the coronavirus pandemic, Musicworks is thrilled to announce the winners of its 2019 Electronic Music Composition Contest. We thank composer entrants for their patience.   Brazilian composer Alex Buck, who is currently based[...] Read more

Featured Article STAFF

Di Mainstone Fashions a New Sonic Future Di Mainstone, inventor of the Human Harp, describes herself as a “bridge botherer.” But to be accurate, her bridge-bothering activities are fairly recent. Before bridges (the Human Harp has, to date, played bridges in Brooklyn, Omaha, and Bristol) came mood-sensitive kinetic[...] Read more

Sound Notes Louise Gray Issue 123