Featured Articles
Baroque to the Future Few musical relationships are as difficult to parse as those between musicians and the instruments they play. It’s a type of interaction that feels like it should be simple—something transactional, between human subject and sounding object—but in practice, objects,[...] Read more
Richard Windeyer FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY Sitting behind his drum kit and laptop, Richard Windeyer manages the energy of the dance floor, while his colleague Sabrina Reeves emcees the evening’s events. A slow folk ballad suddenly ramps up to 120 bpm; the room pauses for[...] Read more
Cold Wave A sad-looking polar bear drifts on a shrinking ice sheet in a vast, deep-blue sea under a bright, blue sky. Scenes like this have long been used to illustrate climate change, and they are more than symbolic. Polar regions are warming at more than twice the rate of the rest of the world. The[...] Read more
Bekah Simms’ Music of Discomfort Bekah Simms likes music that challenges. “I don't want to ever get too comfortable,” she tells me, as we sit down to talk about her work. “I don’t want it ever to be super easy to write a piece, because I feel like then I won’t be a better composer when I[...] Read more
What's Inside Musicworks 141? The Winter 2021/22 issue explores the creative ideas of seven artists who are engaged in beautiful, daring musical acts of innovation, celebration, and resistance . . . artists that audiences and listeners like YOU will be discovering in 2022. Flute enthusiasts, please note that[...] Read more
Announcing the Winners of the 2022 Musicworks Electronic Music Composition Contest TORONTO, CANADA, April 20, 2023: Musicworks is thrilled to announce the winners of the 2022 Musicworks Electronic Music Composition Contest. American composer, sound artist, and educator Leah Reid (left) has won first prize with her composition Reverie. “I am[...] Read more
New Frequencies This issue of Musicworks comes preloaded with guitars. Hollow, heavy, bowed, cracked, pedalled, flung. Trusty companions. Feedback demons. Easy to pick up, hard to put down. While I do not declare this as The Guitar Issue, I do aver that the guitar informed my aleatoric curatorial process[...] Read more
Dálava explores the landscape of song On a summer evening, outside this art gallery-cum-coffeehouse somewhere on the Gulf Islands, silver-green alders, not yet dry and summer-drab, sway, as deer graze in a meadow beyond, and small birds sing. Inside, a young couple performs. Julia Ulehla has spurned the venue’s microphone[...] Read more
Meet the Winners of the 2023 Musicworks Electronic Music Composition Contest TORONTO, CANADA, April 22, 2024: San Francisco-based composer Ningxin Zhang has won first prize for her composition Kagemusha: for Pipa and Electronics. “I am deeply honoured to have received the first prize in the 2023 Musicworks Electronic Music[...] Read more
The Ever-Evolving Sounds of Thanya Iyer The music of Thanya Iyer (the name of the musician–composer as well as of her band) is impossible to define—both for her fans and for herself. “I can’t really place the genre of the music that we’re trying to do,” acknowledges Iyer from her home in[...] Read more
Extermination Music Night It’s quarter past midnight in late May 2008. Storm clouds loom but hold, on this surprisingly humid night. I open the garage, grab my bike and check my backpack: flashlight, five cans of beer, five-dollar donation, notepad and pen. I recheck the instructions I printed from an online[...] Read more
Music from the New Wilderness What can sound tell us about a place? Listen to British Columbia, and it might sound something like Music from the New Wilderness, a multimedia performance work that conjures B.C.’s past and evolving present by incorporating historical and current field recordings into new compositions[...] Read more
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