Featured Articles
What's Inside Musicworks 136? The Spring 2020 issue is a one-stop, one-of-a-kind sonic journey. Most of the stories were assigned, written, and edited before the lockdown, due to the global COVID-19 health crisis, took hold. Events referred to or advertised in this issue were not yet cancelled at press time but likely[...] Read more
Tate Carson's Before, I wandered as a diversion Tate Carson is a composer and upright bassist from New Orleans, Louisiana. Before, I wandered as a diversion (2016), for clarinet and live electronics, won second prize in Musicworks’ 2016 electronic music composition contest. Listen to the full piece, streaming on this page.[...] Read more
Ohama’s Alternative Dimensions Tona Walt Ohama has lived many lives. Born on a potato farm in Southern Alberta, he has spent the past forty years making passionate, deeply personal music while forging friendly connections with anyone who enters his orbit. Since his debut album, the 1982 cassette release Midnite News,[...] Read more
The Complex Stillness of Mark Ellestad “For me, there is a kind of stillness in music that comes from a generous and welcoming place. It has nothing to do with speed or style or tradition or school. It can come from dark or light, from any shade of intensity. It doesn’t need to express anything at all. I love it when[...] Read more
Ocean Bug and Bird Songs BORN CONFUSED. FLY AT LIGHT. Tonight you June bugs pelt my office window in a relentless barrage—desperate wings fanning air that will not hold and tap-tap-tap-tap-tap on the glass. I turn off the lights, sneak outside, guide you through the yard by the glow of my phone. A conductor of[...] Read more
Sound It Out! Musicworks' annual guide to festivals and events is a snapshot of the sonic adventures that will play out in Canadian intersections, fields, and venues this spring and summer. Many of our featured artists, contributors, and staff will be on the scene. We're especially eager to tell[...] Read more
What's Inside Musicworks 145 ON THE COVER: SIMONE SCHMIDT Simone Schmidt is a visionary artist who consistently finds new possibilities for the country song form. In the Toronto psychedelic country bands One Hundred Dollars and The Highest Order and as Fiver, Schmidt has created some of the most original[...] Read more
Aidan Baker’s Ambient Autonomy Over the past twenty years, Berlin-based Canadian guitarist and composer Aidan Baker has developed a creative rhythm, using his guitar as a gateway to seemingly disparate sounds and marrying noise, krautrock, metal, drone, and free jazz in thrilling and unexpected ways. Through his[...] Read more
Jean Derome’s Reflections of Joy Over the past four decades, Jean Derome’s musical interests have spanned everything from standards to skronk. He has composed graphic scores for large ensembles, created multimedia works for string quartets, and devised music for dance, theatre, and cinema works. But what Derome is[...] Read more
Petra Glynt experiments in celebration Ancient rock carvings at Petroglyphs Provincial Park in eastern Ontario inspired Alexandra Mackenzie to call her latest solo musical project Petra Glynt. Evoking rock, ancient cultures, flashes of reflected light, and the enduring power of art, the name seems perfectly apt. Petra Glynt may[...] Read more
Binatone Galaxy Binatone Galaxy is an installation for used cassette players that looks on their obsolescence not as an ending, but as an opportunity to reconsider their functional potential. Superseded by digital audio players as recording and playback devices, cassette players become, in this work,[...] Read more
Bus Ride Home—October Slow, manic whine of police sirens, urgent goose-call of fire engines, anxious “wait for me” of trailing first responders. All muffled under soft falling snow and crystallizing puddles and the breathing of almost three dozen passengers pressed close[...] Read more
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