Analia Llugdar FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY   In her music, Montreal composer Analia Llugdar delves deeply into the primal interior of sound, as evidenced by a sampling of her work from 2003 to 2009. There are compositions for solo cello, small (trio) and large ensembles, often[...] Read more

Sound Bite Richard Simas Issue 107

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

New Stages For New Music Intense purple LED light washes over the Thin Edge New Music Collective (ABOVE PHOTO) as they scramble to soundcheck, seeming to heighten the chaotic mood at Long Winter, Toronto’s monthly interarts festival series during the coldest season. Two different sources of electric guitar[...] Read more

Featured Article David Dacks and Peter Burton Issue 125

Linda Catlin Smith Lets In the Light   It’s 2004. I am taking my first composition course at Mount Allison University. I have recently become enamoured of new music and am catching up on a long list of listening in the basement of the Alfred Whitehead Memorial Music Library. I come across Memory Forms (2001), a[...] Read more

Featured Article Monica Pearce Issue 133

Jessica Moss Explores the Orchestra Within If there is a through line connecting traditional Eastern European klezmer, indie rock, and experimental drone music, it can be found in the work of Jessica Moss. Whether her music is acoustic or electronic, post-rock or post-classical, a stark and dramatic amplified violin performance or a[...] Read more

Featured Article Mary Dickie Issue 143

The Astral Excursions of John Mills-Cockell The imagination of electronic composer John Mills-Cockell exists in a liminal space. His music, with its neon-pastoral glow, feels neither jarringly futuristic nor soothingly nostalgic. Nevertheless, as the very first Canadian owner of a Moog synthesizer (purchased the same day Wendy Carlos[...] Read more

Featured Article Jesse Locke Issue 127

Giorgio Magnanensi in the Sonic Playground Admirers of Giorgio Magnanensi—composer, conductor, teacher, and the artistic director of Vancouver New Music Society—tend to be lavish in their praise of him. “Giorgio is singularly the best conductor of modern music, period,” says composer and Capilano University[...] Read more

Featured Article Nancy Lanthier Issue 117

Psiw-te npomawsuwinuwok kiluwaw yut The first time I heard Jeremy Dutcher on the radio, I was driving my son and some of his non-Native teammates to soccer practice in Peterborough. I had tuned in to the CBC a few bars into Dutcher’s single “Honour Song,” and the fifteen-year-old boys in the car fell[...] Read more

Featured Article Leanne Betasamosake Simpson Issue 130

Avatar Orchestra Metaverse FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY   Avatar Orchestra Metaverse is a global collective making new music within the virtual-reality platform Second Life, an online three-dimensional program that allows users to interact through in-world avatars (users’ digital[...] Read more

Visions of sound Tina M. Pearson Issue 106

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