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Stéphane Roy's Avec le temps | Bekah Simms' subsume This is final post in a series about the prize and honourable mention winners of the 2022 Musicworks Electronic Music Composition Contest. HONOURABLE MENTION: Stéphane Roy's Avec le temps… Time passing like a quiet caravan, this[...] Read more
The Mystical Instruments of Walter Smetak In March 2014, I found myself facing the late Walter Smetak’s Pindorama, a seven-foot-two-inch-tall instrument installation comprising seven calabash gourds arranged in a diamond-like formation and resting on a bamboo pedestal. Dozens of clear plastic tubes with flute mouthpieces fixed[...] Read more
The Quiet Waves of Silla and Rise In early 2016 Ottawa-based DJ, producer, and dancer Eric Vani, aka Rise, was hired to create music to be played at the Canadian Museum of Nature’s Nature Nocturne—a themed-evening series that Vani describes as a “rave in the middle of dinosaur skeletons.”[...] Read more
Olivia Block FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY The sound of a clarinet passage emerges from a quiet section and is punctuated by a series of minute electronic tones. Accompanying the clarinet is a recording of the wind, but the sound is more than just that of a rush of wind; it is[...] Read more
Chroma Mixed Media's Water Water, the second-place winner of Musicworks' 2018 Electronic Music Composition Contest, is a multimedia performance piece structured around changing states of water. It was composed collaboratively by three members of Chroma Mixed Media for a performance with the Co.Crea.Tive[...] Read more
The Ratchet Orchestra In 1961, a virtually unknown African-American band was stranded in Montreal before going on to more promising territory. During their months in Montreal they would build up a local following, mostly musicians, who could hear that something different was going on. It’s a slight and[...] Read more
Ociciwan Contemporary Art Collective: in memoriam . . . Project THE EIGHTH PROJECT initiated by the Edmonton-based Ociciwan Contemporary Art Collective, in memoriam . . . , was nominally about a performance, but soon morphed into a unique achievement of seemingly infinite layers. Its complex genesis, motivations, resonances, and residual impact[...] Read more
Victor Gama builds a brave new soundworld Wherever Victor Gama plays, you can be sure clusters of people will be jostling to percuss the upturned metal bowls of his tipaw (so called because the surface of the instrument looks like the pads of a tiger paw), to bow the eight metal strings of the tahra, or simply to wander the length[...] Read more
Matthew Cardinal’s Asterisms Asterisms, Matthew Cardinal’s debut solo album, creates audial desire paths, not necessarily conjuring anything concrete in my mind’s eye but moving like a current—or a river—that I’m compelled to be swept up in. Asterisms is a pleasure to listen to, and I’ve[...] Read more
David Berezan's Tongue Drum Third place in the 2021 Musicworks Electronic Music Composition Contest was awarded to U.K.-based composer David Berezan's Tongue Drum. The piece premiered online in May 2021 at the European Art Science Technology Network for Digital Creativity (EASTN-DC) in Corfu[...] Read more
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
Composer Wolf Edwards loads the chamber Wolf Edwards’ various stories are so interesting and so curiously entwined that it’s hard to know where to start. Working in the fish-packing plants of Ucluelet, B.C., the ugly-duckling sibling of Tofino’s trendy swan? Playing guitar on the stage of some black-hole dive[...] Read more
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