Urbanvessel and Juliet Palmer Suit-tail-clad Juliet Palmer sits at the top of a stepladder in the middle of the diamond-shaped ring. Tonight, she’s not wearing her Canadian composer hat. Tonight, she’s a sports announcer.   “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to Voice-Box![...] Read more

Featured Article Jonathan Bunce Issue 108

Aaron Oppenheim’s October 12, 2014 (excerpt) October 12, 2014 (excerpt) is a recording of a live performance held in New York City on October 12, 2014 as part of ABC No Rio’s COMA Series, which presents experimental and improvised music. “This piece uses samples of voice for all of its material, manipulated in real time[...] Read more

Sound Bite

Vicky Chow Is Just Warming Up Against a deep blue, backlit stage, Vicky Chow sat at the baby grand in the Scheuer Auditorium at the Jewish Museum on Manhattan’s Upper East Side in April 2017, flanked by forty speakers hanging from stands. For an uninterrupted hour, she played dizzying sequences of interlocking[...] Read more

Profile Kurt Gottschalk Issue 128

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

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

Featured Article Lawrence Joseph Issue 121

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

Sonic Geography Darcy Spidle Issue 125

Joan Tan Jing Wen’s Study of Fragile Objects #1 Singaporean composer Joan Tan Jing Wen’s Study of Fragile Objects #1 was awarded third place in the 2024 Musicworks Electronic Music Composition Contest.   Hit the PLAY button above to listen.    Tan Jing Wen shared notes with Musicworks about how[...] Read more

Featured Article STAFF

Pheeroan akLaff Pheeroan akLaff believes in drums first, rather than last. He can drive an ensemble forward with the machine-gun attack of his snare and the rolling thunder of his bass and toms, compounding and enriching the music with dense polyrhythms, or using the metallic shimmer of his cymbals to surmount[...] Read more

Featured Article Stuart Broomer Issue 114

Wow & Flutter make breathing room The phrase “wow and flutter” typically refers to flawed analog recordings—ones with imperfections that cause the pitch to oscillate, either slowly or quickly. When Toronto-based wind players Bea Labikova, Kayla Milmine, and Sarah Peebles decided to form an improvising trio[...] Read more

Sound Bite Sara Constant Issue 131

Roxanne Nesbitt’s Sonic Investigations People often describe sound as something that reverberates outward into space, but the music of interdisciplinary artist Roxanne Nesbitt seems to move inward; it has an audiovisual geometry that focuses the eye and the ear, pulling you closer to the source. To perform her 2010 composition[...] Read more

Featured Article Sara Constant Issue 141