Lawrence Joseph
Pauline Oliveros & James Ilgenfritz. Altamirage Pauline Oliveros is best known for her invention and development of Deep Listening, which in essence encouraged intense attention to all possible details of sound. While that can conjure relaxing tones and quiet drones, this highly entertaining recording bursts with wit and energy, exposing[...] Read more
Eucalyptus. Moves. Moves is the sixth release from Eucalyptus, a group of Toronto-based jazz and improvisation veterans led by alto saxophonist Brodie West (Musicworks 128). The ensemble’s personnel has remained relatively stable over the years, with West, keyboardist Ryan Driver, trumpeter Nicole[...] Read more
Quatuor Bozzini. Tom Johnson: Combinations. Tom Johnson is a self-described minimalist composer, who has been credited with coining the term in the early ’70s while working as a music critic for the Village Voice. Johnson tends towards the formalistic extreme of minimalism; his works are often based on the mapping of[...] Read more
Instruments of Happiness. Slow, Quiet Music in Search of Electric Happiness. Tim Brady is the artistic director of Instruments of Happiness, under which group name he leads various guitar ensembles of up to one hundred axes. This latest studio release is a collection of four works commissioned for guitar quartet. Each composer was asked to create a piece of approximately[...] Read more
Maurice Louca. Saet El-Hazz (The Luck Hour) Some of the most mind-bending and genre-blending music is emerging from the fertile underground scene of Cairo, Egypt. Maurice Louca is a founding member of the Dwarfs of East Agouza trio with Alan Bishop of Sun City Girls fame and Montreal’s Sam Shalabi, as well as other Cairo-based[...] Read more
Le GGRIL. Sommes. Montreal’s Ratchet Orchestra, Vancouver’s New Orchestra Workshop, and Toronto’s Association of Improvising Musicians are evidence that Canada’s largest cities have robust improvisation scenes whose participants occasionally coalesce to play works composed for larger[...] Read more
John Oliver. Isolation Journals. Vancouver’s multifaceted John Oliver is a renowned composer and guitarist with vast experience—from opera to electroacoustic music. With COVID-19 restrictions limiting live performance opportunities over the past many months, it has been fascinating to observe the multitude of[...] Read more
Anna Webber. Idiom. Born in British Columbia, trained at McGill University, and living in New York since 2008, flutist, saxophonist, and composer Anna Webber is one of the most critically acclaimed forces in new music today. This latest double CD release reveals that her musical language easily matches her past[...] Read more
heArt Ensemble. From the Basement The historical importance of the Quatuor de jazz libre du Québec has been well recognized. Recent book (Eric Filion’s Jazz libre et la revolution québécoise, M Éditeur) and archival CD (Jazz libre du Québec: musique-politique—1971-74, Tour de[...] Read more
Eric Lewis. Intents & Purposes. Are John Coltrane’s out versions of “My Favorite Things” valid representations of the original Rodgers and Hammerstein song from The Sound of Music? What are the similarities and differences between fully scored and freely improvised music? More generally, how best conceive[...] Read more
Lori Freedman. Solor. The title of Montrealer Lori Freedman’s latest disc, Solor, could be a play on solo and Lor(i), but based on the recording’s explosive music, it could also be referring to the volcanic island of Indonesia of the same name. The seven works include five Freedman compositions,[...] 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