Third place in Musicworks’ 2020 Electronic Music Composition Contest was awarded to João Pedro Oliveira’s La Mer Émeraude (The Emerald Sea). The composition has also received awards at SIME Competition, Città di Udine Competition, the Destellos Competition and the Chicago Composers Consortium Competition. “Let us imagine a small invented world, a micro universe where everythingContinue reading “João Pedro Oliveira’s “La Mer Émeraude””
Article Type Archives
June Young (Will) Kim’s “Black, Emerald”
June Young (Will) Kim won second place in Musicworks’ 2020 Electronic Music Composition Contest for Black, Emerald, the third piece in his series of works for amplified canvas. A commission by München Landeshauptstadt Musikstipendium, Kim completed the piece in September 2020 and premiered it in Munich on October 12, 2020 with Sakhile Humbane (flute), AdrianContinue reading “June Young (Will) Kim’s “Black, Emerald””
Reclaiming Chinatown
In many respects, the year 2020 was a time of reckoning for Asian Americans.Hot on the heelsof the landmark Asian ensemble-cast blockbuster Crazy Rich Asians, South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho made history with Parasite, which took home the first Academy Award for Best Picture ever to be received by a subtitled film. After a decades-longContinue reading “Reclaiming Chinatown”
Musicworks’ 2021 Electronic Music Composition Contest closes Dec. 20, 11:59 p.m. PST!
Ready to submit to our eleventh annual Electronic Music Composition Contest? Read the rules below and ENTER here. Please share this announcement with your friends, audiences, and communities. Musicworks’ annual juried contest spotlights new musical talent from around the world and offers cash prizes and opportunities to be published and heard. PRIZES First prize is CAD$500, aContinue reading “Musicworks’ 2021 Electronic Music Composition Contest closes Dec. 20, 11:59 p.m. PST!”
Listening Conditions
We tend to think of an emergency as something sudden—the kind of jarring, life-and-death situation that leaps out at us with abrupt urgency. And when we think about what an emergency sounds like, that assumption is often fresh in our minds: sirens, clatter—noises sharp and loud that aggressively hold our attention. But what happens whenContinue reading “Listening Conditions”
Shifting the Narrative
The time for postponing discussions of environmental issues is over. This is the main thrust of two music-and-sound-powered documentary projects, both of which aim to encourage honest conversations about climate change and to explore the many ways our lives intertwine with—and impact— the fate of the natural world. In her documentary theatre work Tar SandsContinue reading “Shifting the Narrative”
Cold Wave
A sad-looking polar bear drifts on a shrinking ice sheet in a vast, deep-blue sea under a bright, blue sky. Scenes like this have long been used to illustrate climate change, and they are more than symbolic. Polar regions are warming at more than twice the rate of the rest of the world. The meltingContinue reading “Cold Wave”
Anoush Moazzeni Weaves a New Narrative
In Anoush Moazzeni’s The drops of the rain become one with me, small mechanisms move inside and above an open grand piano. Wooden structures glide across the piano strings of their own accord, hammering and pressing the instrument with mallets, while microphones pick up sounds that are then processed digitally on a computer. Moazzeni, seatedContinue reading “Anoush Moazzeni Weaves a New Narrative”
Suddenly Listen Expands its Chamber Space
Trust. Vulnerability. Flexibility. Holistic listening. Non-hierarchical cooperation. Embrace of the unknown. Sense of adventure. These are some of the themes that arise when considering improvised music. If you have ever attended a concert of free-improvised music, you might have experienced that terrifying and exhilarating feeling of unpredictability and risk that stems from listening to musicContinue reading “Suddenly Listen Expands its Chamber Space”
Araz Salek, Inquisitive Traditionalist
The adage about needing to learn the rules before breaking them is a finger-wag directed at young, ambitious artists, cautioning them not to stray from convention until they’ve reached their coveted but elusive destination: mastery. But could the inverse of that be just as true—that one needs to abandon everything they’ve learned in order toContinue reading “Araz Salek, Inquisitive Traditionalist”
The Glittery World of Olivia Shortt
Olivia Shortt may not be a household name, but anyone who’s caught one of their eccentric stage performances—either solo or in avant-garde ensembles—has probably not forgotten them. Over the past few years, Shortt has built an enviable résumé. They made their Lincoln Center debut at the 2018 Mostly Mozart festival’s concert of Michael Pisaro’s monumentalContinue reading “The Glittery World of Olivia Shortt”
DEBBY FRIDAY’S ENERGY POTENTIAL
Across the first few minutes of Bare Bones, the short-film debut by Vancouver artist Debby Friday, a growing, skittering sound unsettles an otherwise pastoral scene. In the film, Friday, a splash of presence in a white tulle dress, kneels riverside amid a verdant landscape. This moment might feel serene were it not for its soundtrack:Continue reading “DEBBY FRIDAY’S ENERGY POTENTIAL”
Susan Alcorn’s Vibrant Deviations
Susan Alcorn moves through life in methodical motion, a few beats slower than the usual rapid flow. At the 2020 edition of Toronto’s Women From Space festival, held in mid March, the pedal steel guitarist’s entrancing performance made the Burdock Tavern feel as if clocks had frozen and the room had entered zero gravity. InContinue reading “Susan Alcorn’s Vibrant Deviations”
Markus Floats’ Motion Emotion
How do you think and write about sound outside of metaphor? Is music necessarily tethered to other aspects of our sensuous and interior lives? Or can we appreciate its meaning more essentially—as energy and dynamics, waves and reverberation? These questions come up around the work of many contemporary musicians working in and around unconventional composition.Continue reading “Markus Floats’ Motion Emotion”
An Inexhaustible Source of Wild Music
In the 1970s, electronic music studios at the University of Toronto and McGill University sparked exciting ideas in guitar composition. With a focus on the evolution of Canadian works for guitar and electroacoustics, guitarist and composer Amy Brandon tracks key events and works from then to now. (Check out Amy’s SoundCloud playlist at the bottomContinue reading “An Inexhaustible Source of Wild Music”
Casey Koyczan Resonates the Future
In early July 2020 it was my pleasure to interview Tlicho Dene interdisciplinary artist Casey Koyczan. He is extremely generous and open. I have done my best to represent our conversation in order for readers to discover and understand his creative practices. Focusing on the Northwest Territories, specifically Yellowknife, where he lived for several years,Continue reading “Casey Koyczan Resonates the Future”
The Audible Connections of Xuan Ye
On Xuan Ye’s website, layers of text, symbols, and images float across the home page like something halfway between poetry and code. The site is an ever-changing digital archeology of her artistic works across a wide range of sonic and visual media. All of it defies categorization. In concert programs, the first sentence of herContinue reading “The Audible Connections of Xuan Ye”
Neither Here Nor There: Musical Identity in the Global Flow
It is impossible to stand still nowadays in the face of worldwide security concerns. With climate change, wars, oppressive political climates, and alarming epidemics, the ability to move around physically has become a humanitarian necessity for many. The commodification and hyperrealism of the Internet produce spaces that everyone now negotiates with trepidation. The rise ofContinue reading “Neither Here Nor There: Musical Identity in the Global Flow”
Anthony Pateras: Sonic Phenomena in Real Time
The music of Anthony Pateras covers vast expanses of composition and improvisation, of acoustic and electronic instrumentation, and combinations of these. He is also a virtuosic pianist. Between 2012 and 2019 he created Immediata, an ambitious series of fifteen albums, self-released over seven years, of music created in various modes and contexts, in order to explore howContinue reading “Anthony Pateras: Sonic Phenomena in Real Time”
Winners of Musicworks’ 2019 Electronic Music Composition Contest Announced . . . at Last!
After a month delay due to challenges presented by the coronavirus pandemic, Musicworks is thrilled to announce the winners of its 2019 Electronic Music Composition Contest. We thank composer entrants for their patience. Brazilian composer Alex Buck, who is currently based in California, won first prize with his composition Screaming Trees. An article about BuckContinue reading “Winners of Musicworks’ 2019 Electronic Music Composition Contest Announced . . . at Last!”
Tosca Terán Has a Brand New Spawn Bag
The lobby is cavernous and cool compared to the heat under the blazing mid-afternoon sun outside. It’s mid July, and I’m visiting Toronto’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) on a decidedly peculiar mission: to listen to music made by fungus. As part of the seventh edition of Vector Festival, Tosca Terán is staging a workshopContinue reading “Tosca Terán Has a Brand New Spawn Bag”
Buffy Sainte-Marie reflects on Illuminations
“God is alive / Magic is afoot / Alive is afoot / Magic never died.” Those words, written by Leonard Cohen and sung by Buffy Sainte-Marie, open a doorway into the mystical world of Illuminations—one of the most musically beguiling, technologically groundbreaking, and undeniably brilliant albums of the 1960s folk era. Unlike a few ofContinue reading “Buffy Sainte-Marie reflects on Illuminations”
Baroque to the Future
Few musical relationships are as difficult to parse as those between musicians and the instruments they play. It’s a type of interaction that feels like it should be simple—something transactional, between human subject and sounding object—but in practice, objects, especially culturally situated ones, can come with as much baggage as their owners. Often they haveContinue reading “Baroque to the Future”
Amy Brandon is Capturing Intimate Chaos
The first time I met guitarist-composer Amy Brandon, we talked about the lineage of a particular sound. Her 2019 composition Mimic—written while she participated in the Canadian League of Composers’ Pivot mentorship progam (presented in partnership with the Canadian Music Centre and Continuum Contemporary Music)—contains a percussion technique in which a woodblock set on topContinue reading “Amy Brandon is Capturing Intimate Chaos”