Concerts and Events
2022 Guelph Jazz Festival. The 2022 edition of the Guelph Jazz Festival marked a singular recovery from the rigours of the COVID-19 pandemic, with more presentation venues engaged than at any time in its twenty-eight-year history. Following the cancellation of the 2020 season, the festival’s[...] Read more
Sound Symposium XX The Newfoundland and Labrador Sound Symposium returned in full form this year, delivering nine jam-packed days of events for its twentieth anniversary. There was a special energy to this year’s festival, maybe because collaboration was something we had taken for granted pre-pandemic.[...] Read more
London Contemporary Music Festival Walking away from the Thames on the final night of the London Contemporary Music Festival (LCMF), I was reminded of the classic scene from The Simpsons in which Bart’s friend Nelson emerges from a screening of David Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch and says, “I can think of at[...] Read more
Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville, 38th edition. After a lean, socially distanced 2021 edition, Festival International de Musique Actuelle Victoriaville (FIMAV) returned this year with a strong program that offered concertgoers a chance to discover large-ensemble works by established artists along with fresh, genre-bending musical[...] Read more
Women From Space, 2022 edition Women From Space usually takes place on International Women’s Day Weekend to celebrate the varied dimensions of contemporary music practiced by women. First launched in 2019 and organized by saxophonists Bea Labikova and Kayla Milmine, this rich, wide-ranging Toronto-based festival[...] Read more
2021 Guelph Jazz Festival Since its inception in 1994, the Guelph Jazz Festival has delivered a thoughtful blend of international and local jazz, academic discourse, and strong community engagement. Cancelled in 2020 due to COVID-19 public health concerns, the festival returned[...] Read more
Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville, 37th edition. Interrupted—like most music festivals—by the global pandemic, Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville (FIMAV) prided itself on being one of the first organizations to resume live programming, albeit with strict COVID-19 protocols, and its all-Canadian lineup[...] Read more
Women from Space Festival. Music always comes from somewhere—some particular where. And the most particular place is identity. The name that Bea Labikova and Kayla Milmine chose for their newly founded festival, Women from Space, simultaneously denotes the first place and the furthest: woman, space—the one[...] Read more
2020 Winnipeg New Music Festival. The twenty-ninth edition of the annual Winnipeg New Music Festival (WNMF) loosely explored the concept of home and, conversely, what it means to be an outsider—or even an exile—in one’s own land. Seven nightly programs, spearheaded by the WNMF’s cocurators Daniel[...] Read more
Fourth Calgary New Music Festival. You may imagine Calgary as a repository of rednecks, oil executives, and a rabidly vocal reactionary element. You wouldn’t be totally wrong. You might imagine a city that splits the difference between Dallas and Anchorage. Who could blame you? The thing is: you live long enough, you[...] Read more
MUTEK Montreal, Twentieth Edition. Montreal, Quebec. August 20–25, 2019. MUTEK Montreal has long served as the high-water mark around the world for a festival presenting leading artists in the fields of electronic music and digital art. The twentieth edition of the five-day festival confirmed MUTEK’s enduring relevance and commitment to promoting fresh[...] Read more
Suoni per il Popolo Festival, 19th Edition. Spread across four main halls and seven auxiliary venues, the sprawling 2019 Suoni per il Popolo Festival encompassed close to two hundred acts covering the musical spectrum, including electronic, jazz, rock, and the less easily classifiable. The festival is breathtaking in its scope, and[...] Read more