Vancouver New Music Festival: Quartetti—A festival of string quartets. This year’s Vancouver New Music annual fall festival was devoted to string quartets. At Quartetti, which ran for three days at the Orpheum Annex in downtown Vancouver, audiences were treated to diverse performances of a wide array of pieces from Black Dog String Quartet (Vancouver),[...] Read more

Concerts and Events Zach Bergman Issue 132

2018 Guelph Jazz Festival. “I’d rather be a human being / than to be avant-garde,” intones William Parker towards the conclusion of his solo bass performance at the 2018 Guelph Jazz Festival. Fittingly, the performance of his piece—which is excerpted and adapted from Flower In A Stained-Glass[...] Read more

Concerts and Events Daniel Glassman Issue 132

Sound Symposium XIX. The nineteenth iteration of the biennial Sound Symposium was distinguished by its colloquium, new awards, and of course, world premieres of risk-taking works. The event opened with the Indigenous Improvisation Colloquium: Freedom and Responsibility; and heritage ceremony and cultural[...] Read more

Concerts and Events Gloria Hickey

Suoni per il Popolo Festival: 18th Edition Like the accordion played in the large improvising ensemble GGRIL, this year’s Suoni per il Popolo expanded in some dimensions and contracted in others, while continuously bellowing out fascinating sounds. Some years the festival has unfolded over a full month, but the 2018 edition ran[...] Read more

Concerts and Events Lawrence Joseph

Open Ears Festival of Music and Sound. Kitchener, Ontario. At Open Ears, auditory circuitry is rewired over five days, with all senses fired up, as festival-goers embark on a sonic quest. The 2018 edition featured the gonzo music of Frank Zappa, an electrifying Nicole Lizée world premiere, and a jaw-dropping percussion solo.  [...] Read more

Concerts and Events Coral Andrews Issue 131

Festival de International Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville, 34th Edition. As spring erupts in the Centre-du-Québec region, so too does FIMAV, the festival of exploratory music that’s been running since 1984. “Eclectic” barely describes the four-day event. Its scope ranges from near-silent to deafening, from the ineffable to the ridiculous[...] Read more

Concerts and Events Stuart Broomer Issue 131

Les Transformables (V). The opening night of the sound-art exhibition Les Transformables (V) featured two live performances. Adorned with a sound-generating mask, Diana Burgoyne was a constant, awesome presence as she marched mechanically throughout the space. Alexandre St-Onge, meanwhile, was in constant motion[...] Read more

Concerts and Events Ian Crutchley

Listening To Art, Seeing Music. Listening To Art, Seeing Music, described in the media materials as a “multi-sensory journey of discovery,” and launched in early 2018 at Toronto’s Aga Khan Museum, encompasses about a dozen installations dotted around the museum within its permanent collection, in its[...] Read more

Concerts and Events Daniel Glassman Issue 130

Julius Eastman: That Which Is Fundamental. At the end of February, publisher G. Schirmer, Inc. announced that it had acquired the catalogue of Julius Eastman and would be restoring, publishing, and promoting his works, putting the composer among the ranks of Tan Dun, Terry Riley, Kaaija Saariaho, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, and Tom Waits.[...] Read more

Concerts and Events Kurt Gottschalk Issue 130

Sam Shalabi’s Land of Kush. Sand Enigma. Sam Shalabi’s musical worlds are a collision of the Montreal Mile End art–noise–rock–improv scene and the bona fide craziness of Cairo—a city where societal and political instability weaves a shifting sand of death and beauty. It’s easy to see how the[...] Read more

Concerts and Events Nilan Perera

send+receive: a festival of sound, v.19 For a festival of any stripe to last until its nineteenth edition suggests a deep commitment by its organizers to maintaining the attention of their audience. crys cole, director of send+receive, builds the festival around a different theme every year, going with “outside of the box[...] Read more

Concerts and Events Daniel Emberg Issue 129