The title of Intortus, a recent electronic composition by Rocío Cano Valiño, is a word used for a kind of cirrus cloud with twisted, seemingly entangled filaments. Even casual cloudwatchers know that these painterly wisps are shapeshifting storytellers; they may start out looking like contrails or skywriting, then turn into strands of punk-rock hair orContinue reading “First-place winner, Musicworks 2024 Electronic Music Composition Contest: Rocío Cano Valiño’s Intortus”
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The Living Songs of Edzi’u Explore Indigenous Experiences, Sovereignty, and Culture
Every performance is a spiritual experience for Tahltan and Tlingit artist Edzi’u, who invites their ancestors to join them each time they make music. Drawing deeply from personal experience and cultural knowledge, their works explore grief, love, and healing. Connecting with their ancestors through intuition, storytelling, and sound is central to their creative process. WithContinue reading “The Living Songs of Edzi’u Explore Indigenous Experiences, Sovereignty, and Culture”
Chuck Copenace is redefining jazz fusion
Chuck Copenace is breaking down barriers in his art form, much as Jeremy Dutcher did in merging his classical music training with the words of the Wolastoqiyik people on his two Polaris Music Prize-winning albums. On his 2023 album Oshki Manitou, Copenace constructed a unique jazz fusion, bringing Ojibway sweat-lodge melodies into the world ofContinue reading “Chuck Copenace is redefining jazz fusion”
The Parallel Multiverses of Kalaisan Kalaichelvan
Mariam gathers her resolve. What happened to Asad after that road accident? She dons her headscarf with determination. In the background, the instrumentals of the song Seenay lag jao na (Asim Raza, arranged by Sohail Abbas) fade out, leaving Saima Jehan’s singing undisturbed. Replacing the music, echoing conch horns encroach underneath the vocals with perverseContinue reading “The Parallel Multiverses of Kalaisan Kalaichelvan”
Evan Parker in Canada
Evan Parker has had a long and fruitful relationship with Canadian musicians and audiences. His first North American tour in 1978 introduced his uncanny solo soprano saxophone techniques to audiences in Toronto and Vancouver as well as affording chances for him to play with various ad hoc ensembles, including Michael Snow and the CCMC atContinue reading “Evan Parker in Canada”
Charles Harding’s Sound Thinking
For twenty-one days last October, as part of an artist residency, New Brunswick sound artist Charles Harding and two composer friends cycled back and forth across Kökar, a small Finnish island accessible only by boat or helicopter, to capture its character using various field recorders and microphones, including hydrophones. Harding found the first night “aContinue reading “Charles Harding’s Sound Thinking”
Okan’s Elizabeth Rodriguez and Magdelys Savigne Celebrate the Here and Now
Canadian Afro-Cuban ensemble Okan takes its name from the word for heart in Lucumí, the liturgical language used in the Afro-Cuban religion of Santeria. The heart of Okan is two songwriter-performers who bring the experiences and potent emotions of their lives to their music, which infuses its Afro-Cuban roots with jazz, folk, and global rhythmsContinue reading “Okan’s Elizabeth Rodriguez and Magdelys Savigne Celebrate the Here and Now”
First-place winner, 2023 Musicworks Electronic Music Composition Contest
At age five, Ningxin Zhang started her classical training on the pipa—a lute-like plucked Chinese instrument in use for more than 2,000 years—and followed the traditional route of practising repertoire (classical and folk songs) and performing in competitions. While studying translation, interpreting, and intercultural studies at Hong Kong Baptist University, Ningxin was inspired to exploreContinue reading “First-place winner, 2023 Musicworks Electronic Music Composition Contest”
Currently Arts Society is Activating the Future
The term “experimental art” often elicits vacant looks and furrowed brows, even among artists and arts communities. For experimental artists Roxanne Nesbitt and Anju Singh, co-artistic directors of the Vancouver-based Currently Arts Society (CAS), the nebulous term poses no significant problem. “We keep the definition really open,” says Nesbitt. “I think that’s the value ofContinue reading “Currently Arts Society is Activating the Future”
Sonny-Ray Day Rider is opening gates to a different world
In his early teenage years, Sonny-Ray Day Rider started playing piano in the home of his paternal grandmother. The thirty-six-year-old Blackfoot composer from the Kainai Blood tribe was raised with the music of powwows and other ceremonial rituals, but it was this hands-on experience that set him on his creative path. While Day Rider isContinue reading “Sonny-Ray Day Rider is opening gates to a different world”
Mustafa Rafiq’s Music of Self-Determination
The opening track of guitarist Mustafa Rafiq’s album If I Were a Dance, featuring music recorded in 2020, provides two points of entry. One is through words—visceral, personal poetry composed and recited by Edmonton-based poet Dwennimmen. The other is through the instrumental sounds that bloom behind the poems: sparse, crackling sonorities that gently swell andContinue reading “Mustafa Rafiq’s Music of Self-Determination “
Evan Dysart Designs Invisible Architecture
A musical project may have a clear beginning, but sometimes it’s difficult for an artist to know when it’s actually finished. For Evan Dysart’s latest album, Invisible Architecture, a tight deadline provided the push to the finish line that he needed. The album’s origins can be traced to the thesis project for Dysart’s master ofContinue reading “Evan Dysart Designs Invisible Architecture”
You Can Can’s Tonal Possibilities
In late March, Felicity Williams and Andrew Zukerman found themselves in a familiar place—the Main Hall of Toronto’s Tranzac Club—doing something they haven’t done before: performing live as the experimental electronic–folk act You Can Can. Zukerman is an audio and visual collage artist who releases music under the Fleshtone Aura moniker and collaborates with BadgeContinue reading “You Can Can’s Tonal Possibilities”
Mariana Vieira’s The Unexpected Encounter with Diversity
Electronic music has the potential to free composers and sounds from physical and cultural constraints while also bringing those elements closer together. Composer Mariana Vieira has been exploring ideas in this creative space since her undergraduate studies in composition at Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa (ESML), where she is currently pursuing her master’s inContinue reading “Mariana Vieira’s The Unexpected Encounter with Diversity”
Pierre Kwenders Dreams for the World
“I grew up surrounded by music lovers. There was always music playing and people dancing. There was always a reason for a family gathering, and I was one of those kids always ready to dance. Whenever there was a family gathering, there was an acoustic guitar around and my uncle would take the guitar andContinue reading “Pierre Kwenders Dreams for the World”
Yaz Lancaster’s Liberatory Modes
![[yaz lancaster] by connie li 10](https://musicworks.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/yaz-lancaster-by-connie-li-10.png)
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”
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”
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”
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”
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”
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”
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”