Recordings
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
Double Review: Joane Hétu. Tags; Ensemble SuperMusique. Sonne l’image. Joane Hétu is the codirector of Montreal’s Ensemble SuperMusique (ESM), but that doesn’t mean she overloads the contemporary ensemble with her own works. She also composes for others. Each of these wide-ranging recordings contains only one Hétu–ESM[...] Read more
Tanya Tagaq. Tongues. Anger is an energy, and it’s always been the fire that feeds Tanya Tagaq’s music. Even when she wordlessly roars or coos, shrieks, or wails, it’s impossible not to feel her incendiary rage vibrating in your gut and through you, along with all the pain and joy, fear, and love[...] Read more
Wadada Leo Smith, Henry Kaiser, Alex Varty. Pacifica Koral Reef. Trumpeter and composer Wadada Leo Smith might be best known for his expansive celebrations of civil rights, Ten Freedom Summers and Rosa Parks: Pure Love; guitarist Henry Kaiser for his soundtracks for Werner Herzog films and underwater musical journeys to polar ice caps; and Alex Varty is[...] Read more
Allen Ravenstine. The Tyranny of Fiction. Allen Ravenstine is best known as the synth player of Cleveland proto-punk band Pere Ubu, yet his experimental work predates their 1975 debut single. When Pere Ubu pressed pause after its first two decades, Ravenstine stepped away from music to earn a pilot’s licence and focus on[...] Read more
Jessica Pavone. Lull. Jessica Pavone’s new album is a close-range recording of her four-movement work Lull for string octet and soloists. Knowing only that Pavone is a violist and composer, I embarked unencumbered by preconceptions on a first listen to the work’s earnest, pulsing waves. The musicians[...] Read more
Christopher Otto. Rag’sma. Microtonal tuning systems have provided the underlying architecture for some of the most intriguing and sumptuous works of the past century; yet even among adventurous listeners, there is still some prejudice about these approaches. In the press release accompanying his debut release as a[...] Read more
Jessica Moss. Phosphenes. Phosphenes is composer-violinist Jessica Moss’s first release since Entanglement in 2018. Defined as the experience of seeing light and shapes while the eye is closed, Phosphenes is an apt title for an album made as the pandemic’s bleakness is starting to allow cracks of light[...] Read more
Mas Aya. Máscaras. Mas Aya’s (Brandon Valdivia) bewitching Máscaras is a melding of disparate elements that add up to more than the sum of their parts. It’s the latest recording from this Nicaraguan-Canadian multi-instrumentalist who has produced or performed with Sandro Perri, U.S. Girls,[...] Read more
René Lussier, Érick d’Orion, Robbie Kuster, and Martin Tétreault. Printemps 2021. A notable blend of noise and nuance, this Québécois quartet soars through seven live improvisations without ever fraying the sonic thread that holds them together. Veterans in this context, René Lussier (guitar and daxophone) and Robbie Kuster (drums) add just enough[...] Read more
Aiyun Huang. Resonances. On Resonances, Toronto-based percussionist Aiyun Huang showcases an eclectic range of musical ideas. The seven-track album is out on the Chicago label Sideband, which was founded in 2020 to present a wide spectrum of new-music records. Resonances features works by an assortment of[...] Read more
Robin Hatch. T.O.N.T.O. When Toronto keyboardist and composer Robin Hatch became an artist in residence at the National Music Centre in Calgary, she was given rare access to a wondrous resource in the centre’s collection of antique instruments: The Original New Timbral Orchestra (TONTO), a mammoth machine that[...] Read more
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