Recordings
Various Artists. Kudatah—Vol. 1 Electronic dance music has always been notorious for its overly rarefied stylistic niches. Within the past few years, the cartoonish overabundance of incomprehensible genre designations has folded in on itself, producing a vast polymorphous body of peculiar and self-aware work. Record labels[...] Read more
Lerner, Filiano, Grassi. Live at Edgefest. Although a tale of two cities—three if you count the Ann Arbor, Michigan, recording location—this CD confirms that Toronto pianist Marilyn Lerner has cemented a mutually beneficial musical relationship with bassist Ken Filiano and percussionist Lou Grassi, both based in New York[...] Read more
Not the Wind, Not the Flag. Vermillion. STALWARTS OF THE TORONTO MUSIC SCENE, guitarist / saxophonist Colin Fisher and percussionist Brandon Valdivia—who collaborate as Not the Wind, Not the Flag—have diverse avant-garde credentials. They have played everything from rock to new music to free jazz, in[...] Read more
Nick Fraser Quartet. Starer. Known for powering—literally—jazz or improvised ensembles from behind his kit, Toronto drummer Nick Fraser brings his compositional talents upfront on Starer. Like a gracious host who ensures each of his guests is properly included in party discourse, the[...] Read more
R. Andrew Lee. Adrian Knight—Obsessions. The last decade has seen an increase in long, single-movement repertoire for the piano, much of which has been the vehicle for inventive and introspective compositional voices. Adrian Knight’s quietly eccentric “Obsessions” is a potent addition to this[...] Read more
Frances White and Kristin Norderval. She Lost Her Voice / That’s How We Knew. Seductive and hypnotic, this is an utterly convincing work for voice and electronics—not an easy combination. For forty-five minutes, it moves slowly through a text by the piece’s director, Valeria Vasilevski, and blurs genres (chamber opera? theatre work? song cycle?) with its[...] Read more
Ida Toninato. Strangeness Is Gratitude. There are few Montreal venues Ida Toninato hasn’t shaken with her thunderous saxophone. She is renowned, both locally and abroad, for her powerful tone and her passionate involvement in avant-garde music. In recent years, her practice of improvisation has morphed into composition[...] Read more
Quartetski. Quartetski Does Bartók: Béla Bartók / Mikrokosmos. Quartetski has devoted itself to transforming well-known classical pieces through radical shifts in instrumentation, improvisation, and recomposition. The Montreal quintet has recorded works by Stravinsky, Prokofiev, and Mussorgsky, and here they take on Béla Bartók’s[...] Read more
Tristan Perich. Parallels; Telescope; Active Field; Dual Synthesis. Across his body of work, composer and conceptualist Tristan Perich varies from electronoise and glitched-out video to sound installations and drawing machines. But what he is no doubt most known for is a singularly focused and wonderfully varied approach to composition. His “one-bit[...] Read more
Sarah Hennies. Gather & Release. The phenomenological aspect of sound has long been the foremost concern of percussionist and composer Sarah Hennies’ work. While her music often exploits the way we hear, it never comes off as some mere exercise. Gather & Release bends her fascination with the[...] Read more
Tim Brady. Instruments of Happiness; Of Sound, Mind and Body. Concert #3 Le Gesù. For over two decades Tim Brady has been creating orchestral works written specifically for ensembles of electric guitars. He is also a master guitarist, occasionally spotted running his fingers over a fretboard in less formal settings. His latest studio CD of notated material collects three[...] Read more
Intersystems. Intersystems. Released in late 2015 by the Italian label Alga Marghen in both CD and LP formats, the richly documented Intersystems boxes set the bar high for reissuing and critically examining the legacy of one vigorous—however obscured by the ensuing almost half century—branch of[...] Read more
- 22 of 40
- « first
- ‹ previous
- next ›
- last »