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Quatuor Bozzini

Quatuor Bozzini is poetry, sweat, talent, idealism, determination, love, survival, fate, and a wonderful wild dance with the spirits. For fifteen years, the Montreal ensemble has steadfastly explored the notion of what contemporary music means today. The players are irrepressible creators and innovators, whether working in the far lands of experimental sound art, the closeContinue reading “Quatuor Bozzini”

John Preus’ Slow Sound

On a brisk fall afternoon in October, about two dozen people hunkered down in the intimate main room of Chicago’s Experimental Sound Studio. They watched some of the city’s more open-minded musicians—including guitarist Leroy Bach and drummer Mikel Avery—improvise on instruments that looked and sounded familiar, yet stood apart for their sculptural beauty. The instrumentsContinue reading “John Preus’ Slow Sound”

Healing Power Records Hits Toronto With a Sonic Balm

The last place you’d expect to hear a comprehensive showcase of a modern experimental music community is on a dance mix. But with Heart of Toronto, a 2013 CD and download compilation, the Toronto-based label Healing Power has done just that. A compelling snapshot of North America’s fourth-largest city’s dizzyingly interconnected underground music scenes, HeartContinue reading “Healing Power Records Hits Toronto With a Sonic Balm”

Margaret Noble’s Safer Is Better

With an underground club DJ’s flair for performance and a conceptual artist’s commitment to the rigorous investigation of ideas, San Diego interdisciplinary artist Margaret Noble explores in her sound work Frakture the resonance in contemporary society of George Orwell’s 1949 dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. First presented as a solo electronic–acoustic performance at the experimental musicContinue reading “Margaret Noble’s Safer Is Better”

Music from the New Wilderness

What can sound tell us about a place? Listen to British Columbia, and it might sound something like Music from the New Wilderness, a multimedia performance work that conjures B.C.’s past and evolving present by incorporating historical and current field recordings into new compositions. One piece relies on the fast-changing sounds of a remote coastalContinue reading “Music from the New Wilderness”

Margaret Noble and Caitlin Smith win top marks in Musicworks’ 2013 Electronic Music Composition and “Sonic Geography” Writing contests

TORONTO, February 4, 2014 Musicworks is thrilled to announce the winners of its 2013 contests. San Diego interdisciplinary artist Margaret Noble’s Safer Is Better has won first place in Musicworks’ 2013 Electronic Music Composition contest, and Toronto composer and writer Caitlin Smith (now based in Vienna, Austria) has won first place in its 2013 “Sonic Geography” Writing contestContinue reading “Margaret Noble and Caitlin Smith win top marks in Musicworks’ 2013 Electronic Music Composition and “Sonic Geography” Writing contests”

A Walk in the Barrios

Buenos Aires, also known as Capital Federal, is the largest city in Argentina, with a population of three million—thirteen million including the greater urban area. The city is located on the western shore of Rio de la Plata (River of Silver), the widest estuary in the world, which channels the muddy waters of the ParanáContinue reading “A Walk in the Barrios”

Lisbon, Portugal

FULL TEXT AVAILABLE ONLY IN PRINT EDITION A wolfman wanders Lisbon’s Praça do Comercio, the broad public square facing the Tagus River estuary leading to the sea. It is nearly midnight. He is bearded, shirtless, and his bare feet slap the calçadas, the white stones that pave the city. He eyes the moon, tips hisContinue reading “Lisbon, Portugal”

Gordan Monahan

Gordon Monahan’s voice floats to me across the Internet from his farm, the Funny Farm, his home base in Meaford, Ontario. Monahan was recently awarded a 2013 Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts, and is already planning a series of installations for 2013, the soonest of which will be a piece for HammerContinue reading “Gordan Monahan”

The Ratchet Orchestra

In 1961, a virtually unknown African-American band was stranded in Montreal before going on to more promising territory. During their months in Montreal they would build up a local following, mostly musicians, who could hear that something different was going on. It’s a slight and unpromising story, but the band, Sun Ra and his SolarContinue reading “The Ratchet Orchestra”

Glenn Buhr

FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY Definitions of personal style don’t get any clearer with life experience. This becomes obvious during my interview with Canadian composer and pianist Glenn Buhr. It also becomes clear however, that personal style can be evaded more deliberately with age. With impressive compositional chops at his disposal, Buhr can articulateContinue reading “Glenn Buhr”

The Ring Road, Iceland

FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY It’s not often in a lifetime that you get to circumnavigate an entire country. And it’s not often that you come across an entire country that’s a small island whose most remarkable work of public infrastructure is a two-lane highway that hugs its coast. Iceland may be best knownContinue reading “The Ring Road, Iceland”

Casa Da Música Builds A Home For Experimental Music

FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY 1497. Lisbon, Portugal. Navigator Vasco da Gama commands the first ship to sail from Europe to India. During the fifteenth century Portugal’s navigators are at the cutting edge of innovation and world discovery, their travel exploits feats of experimental technique. While Vasco da Gama discovered the world’s vastness andContinue reading “Casa Da Música Builds A Home For Experimental Music”

Eldad Tsabary

FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY Israeli-Canadian composer Eldad Tsabary is omnivorous when it comes to digesting various influences, both musical and otherwise. With strong ties to Montreal’s electroacoustic scene, and as a lecturer in Concordia University’s electroacoustics program, Tsabary’s music takes the broadest definition of electroacoustics to heart. His work is influenced by acousmaticContinue reading “Eldad Tsabary”

Knoxville, Tennessee

FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY As with any American city, the dominant feature of the Knoxville soundscape is the almighty car. With an extension of the interstate zooming only a few blocks from downtown, and a multi-lane surface road separating the University of Tennessee from the city centre, the empire of the automobile isContinue reading “Knoxville, Tennessee”

Linda Bouchard’s Murderous Little World

FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY Couple Linda Bouchard’s vision and sound with poet Anne Carson’s texts, engage the talents of a host of collaborators, including extraordinary musicians Guy Few, Joseph Petric, and Eric Vaillancourt, give it all several years to cook, move, splinter, and coalesce, and you have Bouchard’s multimedia performance piece Murderous LittleContinue reading “Linda Bouchard’s Murderous Little World”

Jeff Morton

FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY I imagine that what I hear echoing off the walls of the white-cube gallery is the proceedings of a robot congress, a cacophonous, fevered debate on robot rights—and not a single little robot agrees with any other. I detect strains of barely recognizable melodies, guitar riffs, the squeals ofContinue reading “Jeff Morton”

Eliot Britton

FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY By his own account, Eliot Britton’s music treads dangerous territory. “I represent huge problems with art music and the whole idea of art music,” he says, and goes on to describe how in his compositions within the context of his Ph.D. in music research at McGill University, he’s inchingContinue reading “Eliot Britton”