Leah Reid’s Jouer U.S. composer Leah Reid’s composition Jouer won the Marcelle Deschênes Prize in Electronic Music / Prix Marcelle Deschênes pour la musique électronique in the 2024 Musicworks Electronic Music Composition (EMC) Contest. This donor-supported annual prize awards $300 to[...] Read more

Featured Article STAFF

Carmen Braden Raises the Volume on the Subarctic “I'M JUST GOING TO TOUCH IT ON THE TOP," SAYS CARMEN BRADEN, LOOKING AT A BLACKENED PORCUPINE-LIKE LUMP OF ICE. "WHAT I THINK WILL HAPPEN: IT'S JUST GOING TO FALL APART. READY?"   It’s May 2014, and she’s talking to a camera. Her now-[...] Read more

Profile Samia Madwar Issue 126

Yaz Lancaster’s Liberatory Modes There’s a rare kind of malleability to the music of transdisciplinary artist Yaz Lancaster. Best known as a composer, violinist, and poet, Lancaster holds degrees both in classical violin and in poetry from New York University (NYU), and has had compositions performed by ensembles such[...] Read more

Sound Bite Sara Constant Issue 142

Nicolas Bernier and Martin Messier “La chambre des machines is a project where two electronic musicians are driven by the desire to be involved, as physically as they can be, in a performance context,” explains Nicolas Bernier, discussing his ongoing collaborative work with Martin Messier. “It’s not a[...] Read more

Featured Article Julian Cowley Issue 115

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

Yves Charuest and The Existential Act of Improvisation In the fall of 2016, I attended Montreal rehearsals and concerts and Toronto recording sessions of Roscoe Mitchell and the Toronto-Montreal Art Orchestra for a feature article that was published in Musicworks 127. This complex, largely through-composed music—Mitchell’s[...] Read more

Featured Article Stuart Broomer Issue 141

Markus Floats' Motion Emotion How do you think and write about sound outside of metaphor? Is music necessarily tethered to other aspects of our sensuous and interior lives? Or can we appreciate its meaning more essentially—as energy and dynamics, waves and reverberation? These questions come up around the work of[...] Read more

Featured Article Brennan McCracken Issue 137

SlowPitchSound and the Universe Between the Grooves When it comes to picking the defining factors of a musical practice, some artists view their work as a single, continuous process, homing in on a specific vision and returning to it repeatedly. Others are the opposite—traversing a multitude of styles and sounds as they launch[...] Read more

Featured Article Sara Constant Issue 144

Zosha Di Castri is looking for action An eighty-four-foot, mixed-media triptych spans a wall at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. With three huge scrolls, each three feet high, arranged on the wall in three rows, it’s an elaborate montage on a stark, white backdrop. Photographs, texts, drawings, and lithographs make up[...] Read more

Profile Gloria Lipski Issue 114

The Spatial Sonic Designs of Juro Kim Feliz Genres can be compared to landscapes: they are places where people gawk like tourists, set up camp on Spotify playlists, and explore musical structures. Juro Kim Feliz sat down with me in November 2021 to talk about the challenges of creating in both the Filipino and the Canadian[...] Read more

Sound Bite Rachel Evangeline Chiong Issue 141

Bennett Jenisch In addition to having recently won the Musicworks Electronic Music Contest with his first ever acousmatic piece, Buried Gesture, Bennett Jenisch also writes and performs with his live electronic band Moth Vegas. “I would say that probably about half of what I produce is stuff like the[...] Read more

Sound Bite Vincent Pollard Issue 115