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

Emilie LeBel’s Field Notes For many composers, a work in progress comes with strings attached—no pun intended. There are arts councils and concert presenters to satisfy, musicians to liaise with, premiere dates that draw ever closer. Deadlines, of course, can get the juices flowing, and creative constraints ([...] Read more

In the Works Jennie Punter Issue 120

James O’Callaghan’s Bodies-Soundings James O’Callaghan’s Bodies-Soundings, winner of Musicworks’ 2014 Electronic Music Composition contest, is a highly suspenseful acousmatic piece in which sounds are partially diffused through tactile transducers (specialized speakers that transmit sound through any object to[...] Read more

Sound Bite Jennie Punter Issue 121

Anna Höstman Tunes In To Her Roots There’s no place like home. For Anna Höstman, winner of the 2013 Toronto Emerging Composer Award, home is the Bella Coola Valley, a remote wilderness wonderland on British Columbia’s central coast. Its rich cultural history dates back 10,000 years to the Nuxalkmc people (now[...] Read more

In the Works Jennie Punter Issue 117

Timothy Roy’s “dans les dents de la guivre” Saint Paul, Minnesota-based composer Timothy Roy’s “dans les dents de la guivre” was awarded second place in the 2023 Musicworks Electronic Music Composition Contest.   Format: Binaural Stereo . . . please listen with headphones!  [...] Read more

Featured Article STAFF

Alanna Stuart Embraces the Bombast Multidimensional artist and music producer Alanna Stuart is constantly evolving. She regards categories not as borders but as things to be transcended. In her acclaimed duo Bonjay, with Ian “Pho” Swain, as well as her collaborative projects and her solo songwriting, she is[...] Read more

Featured Article Gloria Blizzard Issue 141

Kyle Brenders It’s 1999. The millennium is approaching, and Kyle Brenders, teenage saxophonist, is living the small-town Ontario version of the jazz life. He’s a member of the Bill Sherry Big Band, playing vintage swing tunes for dancers in the St. Thomas municipal arena, decades-old tunes[...] Read more

Sound Notes Stuart Broomer Issue 108

An Inexhaustible Source of Wild Music In the 1970s, electronic music studios at the University of Toronto and McGill University sparked exciting ideas in guitar composition. With a focus on the evolution of Canadian works for guitar and electroacoustics, guitarist and composer Amy Brandon tracks key events and works from[...] Read more

Featured Article Amy Brandon Issue 137

Silent Season: Intrinsically Connected to Nature While living in Union Bay in 2007, Jamie McCue spent his downtime hiking, camping, and fishing in Vancouver Island’s abundant forests and rivers. Deeply moved by the symphonic rhythms of wildlife, blowing winds, and flowing water, he imagined meditative soundtracks that complemented his[...] Read more

Sound Notes Leslie Ken Chu Issue 139

Amy Brandon is Capturing Intimate Chaos The first time I met guitarist-composer Amy Brandon, we talked about the lineage of a particular sound.             Her 2019 composition Mimic—written while she participated in the Canadian League of Composers’[...] Read more

Featured Article Sara Constant Issue 134

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

Featured Article Sara Constant Issue 135