Featured Articles

Erin Sexton Erin Sexton is in awe of the universe. By situating her creative practice in relation to the stars and the planets, the Montreal sound artist seeks to engage in conversations with the cosmos. Her work is grounded in the hard materials we know as nature, electricity, and the elements. She[...] Read more

Featured Article Deanna Radford Issue 119

Allison Cameron’s Rarefied Soundworld "I NEVER THOUGHT I WAS DOING ANYTHING DIFFERENT THAN ANYBODY ELSE—I just thought, I’m doing what anybody else would write,” states Allison Cameron, matter-of-factly. Anyone familiar with her music—or her characteristic wry humour—could read this particular[...] Read more

Featured Article Nick Storring Issue 122

What's Inside Musicworks 154? ON THE COVER ANJU SINGH Cover photo by Dani Osborne Story by Melissa Vincent   Vancouver-based Anju Singh creative work has spanned a remarkable range of forms throughout her prolific career. "I've always known that I wanted to make things, she tells writer[...] Read more

Featured Article STAFF Issue 154

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

Philip Glass Most people get presents or have parties thrown for them on special occasions. Philip Glass, however, was in more of a giving mood as he celebrated his seventy-fifth birthday at the end of January. The candles on his cake marked the start of a remarkable year that has the American composer[...] Read more

Featured Article John Terauds Issue 112

Gordan Monahan Gordon Monahan’s voice floats to me across the Internet from his farm, the Funny Farm, his home base in Meaford, Ontario.   Monahan was recently awarded a 2013 Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts, and is already planning a series of installations for 2013,[...] Read more

In the Works David McCallum Issue 116

New Age Music—The Second Wave I’m lying on the living-room floor. I’ve been like this for two hours, on my back, in the dark, headphones on. The record on the turntable is literally locked in its groove and producing a low-note drone that at times sounds like a whale’s moan or some sort of detuned,[...] Read more

Featured Article Jay Somerset Issue 107

Buffy Sainte-Marie reflects on Illuminations “God is alive / Magic is afoot / Alive is afoot / Magic never died.”   Those words, written by Leonard Cohen and sung by Buffy Sainte-Marie, open a doorway into the mystical world of Illuminations—one of the most musically beguiling, technologically[...] Read more

Featured Article Jesse Locke Issue 135

What's Inside Musicworks 139?   ON THE COVER: Evensong (2018) by Lou Sheppard, who recently made the 2021 long list for the prestigious Sobey Art Award. Congratulations Lou! This issue contains a special 30-page section that explores climate emergency through the stories of nine sound and music[...] Read more

Featured Article Issue 139

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

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

Sonic Geography Susan Burchill

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