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There’s a rare kind of malleability to the music of transdisciplinary artist Yaz Lancaster. Best known as a composer, violinist, and poet, Lancaster holds degrees both in classical violin and in poetry from New York University (NYU), and has had compositions performed by ensembles such as JACK Quartet and the Boston chamber orchestra A FarContinue reading “Yaz Lancaster’s Liberatory Modes”
Article Type Archives
The Tao of Gayle
Last year in mid October, while scrolling down Facebook, I came across a densely expressive and evocatively written post from Montreal singer Sarah Albu, who was “surfacing momentarily,” she wrote, from a recording project “revisiting, revising, and recording” the complete vocal works of Gayle Young from 1976 to today. I was moved and intrigued byContinue reading “The Tao of Gayle”
Resonant Frequencies
I first encountered Alanna Stuart on a mid-November evening in 2018. After an exhilarating trudge through the snow-muted streets of Toronto’s Stanley Park neighbourhood, I made what felt like a heroic landing at Array Space, where a few dozen or so hearty souls were gathering for a social event—punctuated with short sets of music—celebrating theContinue reading “Resonant Frequencies”
Beny Esguerra Unifies the Equation
The potential for music to unite people across divides—geographical, temporal, cultural, or philosophical—is a constant inspiration for Ruben “Beny” Esguerra. Through his myriad projects, the Toronto songwriter, producer, educator, community activist, and multi-instrumentalist is building bridges: between North and South, between ancient flutes and modern turntables, between Indigenous peoples and settlers, between cumbia and hip-hop—andContinue reading “Beny Esguerra Unifies the Equation”
Jessica McMann Brings the Music Home
While some creative people have been struggling to fill their time over the course of the pandemic, Cree dancer and musician Jessica McMann, who is a member of Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan—has been busy. But with powwows and in-person contemporary dance performances on pause for most of 2020 and 2021, McMann, who is basedContinue reading “Jessica McMann Brings the Music Home”
The Spatial Sonic Designs of Juro Kim Feliz
Genres can be compared to landscapes: they are places where people gawk like tourists, set up camp on Spotify playlists, and explore musical structures. Juro Kim Feliz sat down with me in November 2021 to talk about the challenges of creating in both the Filipino and the Canadian contemporary classical-music landscapes, and also about aContinue reading “The Spatial Sonic Designs of Juro Kim Feliz”
The Apperceptive Musical Adventures of Taylor Brook
Canadian composer Taylor Brook—whose music can strike an unusual balance between challenge and charm,sometimes with an astonishing delicacy—had been based since 2011 in New York City, where he was first a doctoral student and then a lecturer at Columbia University, all the while making the most of the city’s wealth of performers. But in 2020,Continue reading “The Apperceptive Musical Adventures of Taylor Brook”
Xylem Records: Building Community for Live Coding
The exploratory, collectivist ethos of the U.K. live-coding scene laid the groundwork for Xylem Records, an experimental electronic music netlabel founded by composer and computer scientist Dr. Norah Lorway. Originally from Vancouver, B.C., Lorway moved to the U.K. in 2010 to pursue a Ph.D. at the University of Birmingham, where she researched electroacoustic composition andContinue reading “Xylem Records: Building Community for Live Coding”
Rocío Cano Valiño’s Okno wins first place in Musicworks’ 2020 Electronic Music Composition Contest
After following the enigmatic whooshes, dangling creaks, and scene-stealing clunks around the evocative sonic space of Okno, I was not surprised to learn that its composer, Rocío Cano Valiño, has a background in interior design—a talent she employs in the various collaborative, multidisciplinary projects she’s pursuing in Lyon, France, where she is based. “Space isContinue reading “Rocío Cano Valiño’s Okno wins first place in Musicworks’ 2020 Electronic Music Composition Contest”
James Goddard Makes Brave New Spaces
“Recorded music these days is like an inversion of the old-time medicine show—you know, those people who would go from town to town and put on this big carnival performance to sell their medicine. Now that ticket sales have become the main income generator for musicians, recorded music is just an advertisement for the show.”Continue reading “James Goddard Makes Brave New Spaces”
David Psutka Augments Creative Spaces
In 2019, David Psutka was approached by Karen Vanderborght to compose the soundtrack for her augmented reality documentary Grey Matter AR, which she had started developing a few years earlier. Vanderborght, who describes herself as an extended reality (XR) creative, had begun by filming interviews with ten Canadian seniors from different backgrounds. These subjects includedContinue reading “David Psutka Augments Creative Spaces”
Ashley Au Is Stretching Out
Most music fans in Winnipeg have seen plenty of Ashley Au playing bass in recent years in a wide range of idioms—Americana, hip-hop, jazz, and sludge metal. Pausing to tally current projects, Au counts in blinks before saying, “I’m in an open relationship with maybe seven or eight different ensembles right now, constantly negotiating theContinue reading “Ashley Au Is Stretching Out”
Scrap Arts Music: Dr. Seuss meets steampunk
Scrap Arts Music is a joyous collision of creativity, experimental sound, and energetic movement, with percussion pieces performed on reborn hunks of junk. It’s challenging to describe and impossible to ignore. Since 1998, when he founded Scrap Arts Music in Vancouver with his wife Justine Murdy, composer and performer Gregory Kozak has built more thanContinue reading “Scrap Arts Music: Dr. Seuss meets steampunk”
Musicworks Announces 2020 Electronic Music Composition Contest Winners
TORONTO, CANADA, August 30, 2021. For immediate release: After a four-month delay due to challenges presented by the coronavirus pandemic, Musicworks is thrilled to announce the winners of its 2020 Electronic Music Composition Contest. We thank the 2020 entrants for their patience. Argentinian composer Rocío Cano Valiño (left) has won first prize with her composition Okno. TheContinue reading “Musicworks Announces 2020 Electronic Music Composition Contest Winners”
Patricia Martinez: Del cuadro a la postergación
Listen to Del cuadro a la postergación (1994, acousmatic, stereo) Composed by Patricia Martinez Composer notes Del cuadro a la postergación was part of the diptych Espejos de tiempo / Mirrors of time. It is based on a work by the German artist Günther Uecker called The nail on the paint. The work is aContinue reading “Patricia Martinez: Del cuadro a la postergación”
Silent Season: Intrinsically Connected to Nature
While living in Union Bay in 2007, Jamie McCue spent his downtime hiking, camping, and fishing in Vancouver Island’s abundant forests and rivers. Deeply moved by the symphonic rhythms of wildlife, blowing winds, and flowing water, he imagined meditative soundtracks that complemented his lush surroundings. That year he launched the electronic-music label Silent Season, whichContinue reading “Silent Season: Intrinsically Connected to Nature”
Sounds of an Unfolding Emergency
“we have no power or wifi/internet” “we still have power but no water” “still no power also, using the car as a heater and to charge my phone” “no power but doing okay” “keep an eye out for a boil water notice” “are there any gas stations in Brownsville without a 2Continue reading “Sounds of an Unfolding Emergency”
Matthew Cardinal’s Asterisms
Asterisms, Matthew Cardinal’s debut solo album, creates audial desire paths, not necessarily conjuring anything concrete in my mind’s eye but moving like a current—or a river—that I’m compelled to be swept up in. Asterisms is a pleasure to listen to, and I’ve found it to be a welcome companion in ever-shifting contexts. Cardinal is basedContinue reading “Matthew Cardinal’s Asterisms”
Saw-whet Records: Prairie Experimentalists Unite
For Saw-whet Records’ Ethan Bokma, putting an album together means exactly that: a new release requires not only great music and a cover design, but also blank, unassembled album jackets, glue, spray paint, and several types of adhesive tape. A prominent bass clarinetist on the Edmonton scene and a reliably frequent audience member at otherContinue reading “Saw-whet Records: Prairie Experimentalists Unite”
Trase Pa: Choreographing the Soundworld of David Bontemps’s Traces
In most cultures there has always been a synergetic interplay between music and dance—one informing and amplifying the other. Music exemplifies the physicality and rhythmicity that exists in a dancing body. The synergy of dance and music is a repertoire of invitations to the spaces in between—where syncopation meets breath and elicits feeling, and whereContinue reading “Trase Pa: Choreographing the Soundworld of David Bontemps’s Traces”
The Genre of Morgan-Paige
Morgan-Paige Melbourne was a child prodigy who started playing piano at three and singing and composing shortly afterwards. Soon she was winning piano competitions, and at sixteen she had her first composition published with SOCAN. It looked like she was heading for a glittering career as a concert pianist. But, like so many young BlackContinue reading “The Genre of Morgan-Paige”
Aidan Baker’s Ambient Autonomy
Over the past twenty years, Berlin-based Canadian guitarist and composer Aidan Baker has developed a creative rhythm, using his guitar as a gateway to seemingly disparate sounds and marrying noise, krautrock, metal, drone, and free jazz in thrilling and unexpected ways. Through his workmanlike approach, he has amassed a sprawling discography—the selected discography on hisContinue reading “Aidan Baker’s Ambient Autonomy”
C. Diab’s Cascadian Guitar Music
Vancouver-based bowed guitarist Caton Diab (who composes as C. Diab) makes sonorous music that you feel deeply. Primarily crafted on an acoustic guitar with a pickup, effects pedals, a loop station, and bow, Diab’s textured and mournful tones rattle your bones and settle into your heart, coaxing you into acknowledging your emotions. Diab has referredContinue reading “C. Diab’s Cascadian Guitar Music”
Eliza Kavtion’s Call and Response
In her spellbinding live show, Montreal-based multi-instrumentalist Eliza Kavtion twists threads from documentary films, punk-rock distortion, and hip-hop innovation together with her wailing, virtuosic guitar playing. She and guitar become one: a fury of fuzzy drones, rhythmic sputters, and menacing loops, out of which emerge soaring melodies and defiant roars. Off the stage, Kavtion considersContinue reading “Eliza Kavtion’s Call and Response”