My partner Emily and I moved to Glasgow from Toronto a year ago. The first TV shows we saw included a pipe-band championship and a shepherding competition. Both were brilliant to listen to. We thought that’s what TV was going to be here. It isn’t. And aside from the guys on Buchanan St. playing “ScotlandContinue reading “Bagpipes Blew My Mind”
Article Type Archives
The Ever-Evolving Sounds of Thanya Iyer
The music of Thanya Iyer (the name of the musician–composer as well as of her band) is impossible to define—both for her fans and for herself. “I can’t really place the genre of the music that we’re trying to do,” acknowledges Iyer from her home in Montreal. “For us, it’s ever-evolving. We do a lotContinue reading “The Ever-Evolving Sounds of Thanya Iyer”
Lina Allemano is Splitting Time
If Toronto’s avant-jazz and free-improv community has a living room, it’s the Southern Cross Lounge, the front room of the Tranzac Club—a cluttered bandstand with an ancient upright, a friendly bar in the back corner, a familiar audience—where drummer Nick Fraser books bands from the creative edges. Lina Allemano plays here regularly when she’s inContinue reading “Lina Allemano is Splitting Time”
Joseph Shabason’s patient unravelling
When we listen to music, are we meant to enter the hearts and minds of those who’ve created it? Or is listening more of an interior experience—of turning inwards and creating space to experience our own feelings? For Joseph Shabason, the answer to both questions is yes. The Toronto-based saxophone player and new-jazz composer hasContinue reading “Joseph Shabason’s patient unravelling”
Muxubo Mohamed Dares to Represent
Compromise? What is compromising? Compromising for what? Compromising for what reason? . . . What is compromise? —Eartha Kitt That emphatic excerpt from a 1982 documentary is sampled at the start of “He(r)story,” the opening track on Obuxum’s beat-laden EP H.E.R. While Kitt is alluding to compromising with a man, Obuxum is zooming out further, asking whyContinue reading “Muxubo Mohamed Dares to Represent”
Lea Bertucci composes time and space
As I sit here listening to Metal Aether, the most recent full-length release from New York composer and performer Lea Bertucci, the difficulty of locating this music’s boundaries becomes increasingly clear. Bertucci’s compositions balance minimalist saxophone patterns with field recordings collected in places as disparate as New York City and ancient regions of Mexico. TheContinue reading “Lea Bertucci composes time and space”
Wow & Flutter make breathing room
The phrase “wow and flutter” typically refers to flawed analog recordings—ones with imperfections that cause the pitch to oscillate, either slowly or quickly. When Toronto-based wind players Bea Labikova, Kayla Milmine, and Sarah Peebles decided to form an improvising trio together in late 2017, Wow & Flutter felt like the natural name choice: it’s exactlyContinue reading “Wow & Flutter make breathing room”
Bug Incision: Calgary’s Cross-Pollination Buzz
The world of free improvisation is like a parallel universe, a global underground community of nonidiomatic soundmakers, recording with each other in every imaginable permutation, connected via a proliferation of text- and link-heavy Web 1.0 sites, DIY venues, and CD-R labels, with a passionately devoted audience consisting of— in large part, if not exclusively—improvisers themselves,Continue reading “Bug Incision: Calgary’s Cross-Pollination Buzz”
BLACKOUT MUSIC
Deep black space is speckled with birdcalls and falling water until an ominous boom looms and the drumming of rat-a-tat-tat – insect infestation or insistent rain – is jarring and subsides in the darkness a piano perforates the heavy steely rumble of trains and we tumble up the keyboard to dissolve into sparkles tiny fireflyContinue reading “BLACKOUT MUSIC”
Julia Mermelstein’s “wonted II-III”
Toronto-based composer Julia Mermelstein creates music focused on detailed tone, colour, textures, and gestural movement that reveal evocative, immersive, and subtly changing soundscapes. Her work aims to blend acoustic and electronic sound worlds in seamless interactions. Drawing inspiration from Buddhist philosophy, psychology, and ritual, as well as her extensive background in ballet, Mermelstein blends multipleContinue reading “Julia Mermelstein’s “wonted II-III””
Rebecca Bruton Lets The World In
Rebecca Bruton describes her work as an “understated, Surrealist folk music”—music that’s experimental but also simple, with a sensuousness and a weirdness to it. “Music that makes sense,” she says, “but you’re not sure why.” A composer, violinist, and vocalist, based in Calgary, Bruton studied music first at York University and then at Simon FraserContinue reading “Rebecca Bruton Lets The World In”
Demian Rudel Rey’s “Theophilus”
Argentinian composer and guitarist Demian Rudel Rey has received numerous awards and honorable mentions in various national and international composition compstitions, and his pieces have been selected and programmed at prestigious festivals across Europe and the Americas. Theophilus (which you can hear on this page) was written on the occasion of a tribute festival toContinue reading “Demian Rudel Rey’s “Theophilus””
Vanese “VJ” Smith is Right on Time
Vanese (pronounced va-NIECE) “VJ” Smith and I are on the Spadina streetcar, chatting like old friends. Just minutes earlier we met for the first time. I arrived from up North (aka Thornhill) in a state of winter-blues petulance, but when I saw her bright smile and waving arm from across the street, I was gratefulContinue reading “Vanese “VJ” Smith is Right on Time”
Bus Ride Home—October
Slow, manic whine of police sirens, urgent goose-call of fire engines, anxious “wait for me” of trailing first responders. All muffled under soft falling snow and crystallizing puddles and the breathing of almost three dozen passengers pressed close. And the incessant growl of city bus engine and tires and radiator, the whirring mumble not quiteContinue reading “Bus Ride Home—October”
Label Profile: Redshift Records
We won’t go into the details—because, frankly, we don’t understand them—but in astronomy a redshift is a way to measure an object’s placement in space, and its movement vis-à-vis the earth. “It’s like the Doppler effect, but for light,” Redshift Records mastermind Jordan Nobles tells me in a telephone interview from his North Vancouver home.Continue reading “Label Profile: Redshift Records”
First-place Winner, Musicworks 2017 Sonic Geography Writing Contest
Childhood has no single place, no secret garden, no single carousel to ride on, nor tree branch to fall from: just hours, that slip away, so similar to music, which has no place either, just passing time it tries to keep up with. In playgrounds kids run in circles, sliding down, climbing up the imaginedContinue reading “First-place Winner, Musicworks 2017 Sonic Geography Writing Contest”
First-place winner, Musicworks’ 2017 Electronic Music Composition contest
The glitchy, vaguely dystopian composition constructed from manipulated vocals is almost widespread enough now to warrant its own genre tag. Laurie Anderson is, of course, its foremother. Recent interesting entries include Holly Herndon’s Platform, Katie Gately’s Pipes, and Giant Claw’s Soft Channel. All of them delight in detaching signifier from signified, building up intricate, oftenContinue reading “First-place winner, Musicworks’ 2017 Electronic Music Composition contest”
MUSICWORKS UNVEILS 2017 CONTEST WINNERS
Musicworks is thrilled to announce the winners of its 2017 contests. Erik Ingalls’ The Gravity of Plim has won first place in Musicworks’ 2017 Electronic Music Composition contest. Ingalls’ winning piece began as an accompaniment to a science-fiction short story written by his partner. “Being a classic science-fiction fan, I had in mind an impression ofContinue reading “MUSICWORKS UNVEILS 2017 CONTEST WINNERS”
Kamancello explores a new duo dimension
“Kamanche means little bow in Kurdish and Farsi,” says Shahriyar Jamshidi, the kamanche player in Kamancello, his Toronto-based duo with cellist Raphael Weinroth-Browne. The pair marry rich lyricism and microtonal ornamentation, influenced by Iranian, classical, and metal musics, in fully improvised performances that feel their way forward from quiet drones to chugging, propulsive rhythms, andContinue reading “Kamancello explores a new duo dimension”
Spool: Music in the Margins
CERTAIN LABELS are very much the product of a particular vision and exude cohesion of an almost iconic order—one that even seems to magically weather shifts in taste and approach. ECM’s elegant black and white photography, sans serif typeset, and crisp, reverberant sonic profile is a universe unto itself, carefully sculpted by its founder ManfredContinue reading “Spool: Music in the Margins”
Michael Pounds’ “Breathing 2: Re/Inspiration”
Michael Pounds began his career as a mechanical engineer, receiving a B.S. from Ohio University. After working at the NASA Lewis Research Center, he returned to the academic world to study music composition with a focus on computer music and music technology. After undergraduate music studies at Bowling Green State University he earned graduate degreesContinue reading “Michael Pounds’ “Breathing 2: Re/Inspiration””
Another Timbre’s Canadian Composers Series
“I earn my living as a sound recordist on TV programs,” Simon Reynell relates. “I don’t put creative energies into that, but it’s well paid, so I don’t have to work more than an average of six days a month, which allows me to spend most of my time on the label, doing the thingsContinue reading “Another Timbre’s Canadian Composers Series”
Senyawa plays the music of the universe
On a chilly, rainy Thursday May night, a crowd of sixty or so people, spread unevenly around the pews of Halifax’s Fort Massey United Church, is waiting. OBEY Convention creative director Andrew Patterson has just introduced Indonesian “doom folk” duo Senyawa, but after the applause has faded they have still not appeared. Finally, two diminutiveContinue reading “Senyawa plays the music of the universe”
Bekah Simms’ Music of Discomfort
Bekah Simms likes music that challenges. “I don’t want to ever get too comfortable,” she tells me, as we sit down to talk about her work. “I don’t want it ever to be super easy to write a piece, because I feel like then I won’t be a better composer when I’m done it.” It’sContinue reading “Bekah Simms’ Music of Discomfort”