Concerts and Events
Festival de International Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville, 33rd Edition. Festival de International Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville (FIMAV) has defined itself by diversity, crossing genres to present fresh, unexpected music, whether intimate or epic, and maintaining a tradition that touches on classical, pop, and jazz. The festival is a major event, mounting[...] Read more
Sixth Dither Extravaganza. Despite its name, the guitar quartet Dither means business. The New York-based group made waves with the 2015 Tzadik release John Zorn’s Olympiad Vol 1: Dither Plays Zorn, with the foursome playing some of Zorn’s less-heard game pieces. But even before that, they were hosting an[...] Read more
Vancouver Symphony Orchestra New Music Festival. LIKE A BENEVOLENT OCTOPUS, THE VANCOUVER SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA'S ANNUAL NEW MUSIC FESTIVAL HAS BEEN EXTENDING ITS TENTACLES in a variety of occasionally surprising directions since its inception four years ago. This year, for example, the event opened with a performance by avant-jazz[...] Read more
26th Winnipeg New Music Festival. Winnipeg New Music Festival (WNMF) in recent years has been noteworthy for its eagerness to book a program that edges ever further from expectations. The twenty-sixth edition of WNMF was anchored, as usual, at the Centennial Concert Hall. Unconventional satellite venues have become the norm[...] Read more
Unsound Toronto. Part of Luminato Festival. For over thirty years, the Richard L. Hearn Generating Station was something of an urban myth in Toronto. A massive, decommissioned power plant, shuttered in 1983, it sat there at the edge of the city’s consciousness on the industrial Port Lands, loved only by urban explorers of[...] Read more
Sound Symposium XVIII. Audiences at Sound Symposium XVIII in St. John’s, Newfoundland were treated to a full spectrum of improvisation, including free improvisation, graphic scores, and directed improvisation. We heard a vast range of music for electroacoustic soundscapes, Javanese gamelan, contemporary art[...] Read more
Electric Eclectics 2016. THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE AT ELECTRIC ECLECTICS IS THAT YOU'RE NEVER REALLY BALANCED. The three-day midsummer festival of weird music and art takes place at Gordon Monahan and Laura Kikauka’s Funny Farm in Meaford, Ontario, which has hardly any level ground. The ground in front of[...] Read more
Suoni per il Popolo Festival: 16th Edition. Experiencing James Tenney’s In a Large Open Space during Suoni per il Popolo conjured parallels between the performance (held as part of a retrospective of the composer’s work, organized by Quatuor Bozzini) and the festival as a whole. The music reverberated through the high-[...] Read more
Open Waters Festival. Since 1990 the Upstream Music Association has been a crucial part of Halifax’s vibrant music community—both as presenter and as ensemble. For nineteen years, veteran improviser Paul Cram, a longtime Upstream affiliate, was artistic director. Lukas Pearse, an industrious and[...] Read more
Festival International Musique Actuelle Victoriaville, 32nd Edition. The Festival International Musique Actuelle Victoriaville (FIMAV) arrives with the late, brief spring of Quebec’s central region, an energizing jolt between winter and summer that sees the flowering of older vines and new life bursting through the earth. This year’s[...] Read more
Guelph Jazz Festival. Guelph, Ontario. September 16–20, 2015. Storytelling of the verbal and instrumental variety was an important feature of this year’s Guelph Jazz Festival. New venues such as Heritage Hall, Guelph’s first black church, and the soft-seated Guelph Little Theatre added a feeling of intimacy to the festival’s[...] Read more
Apocalypsis I ATTENDED A PERFORMANCE of the Luminato Festival’s production of R. Murray Schafer’s Apocalypsis not knowing what to expect; the full version of this work had only been produced once, thirty-five years ago. After the performance, I obtained the scores for its two acts[...] Read more
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