Epa Fassianos’ Chromatocosmos won third place in Musicworks’ 2018 Electronic Music Composition Contest, and also won first place in Category A of Musica Nova 2018 (the long-running international electroacoustic music composition competition presented by Society for Electroacoustic Music of Czech Republic). Chromatocosmos is an electroacoustic piece which is based on original recordings of the baglamas,Continue reading “Epa Fassianos’ Chromatocosmos”
Author Archives: Musicworks
‘Greedy Music’
“In 1993, I was making word clouds because I wondered what my computer’s hard drive was thinking about during its idle time,” Canadian writer and artist Douglas Coupland said in a 2013 interview. This summer, I wondered what my hard drive (aka my brain) was doing when I was at the computer editing this issue.Continue reading “‘Greedy Music’”
Webber/Morris Big Band
On a cold January evening in 2019, Angela Morris approaches the bandstand of Manhattan’s Jazz Gallery and announces that she will be able to conduct her piece that night. A few days ago it was still uncertain. Weeks earlier, on Christmas Eve, she broke her shoulder, making the arm movements required to lead the bandContinue reading “Webber/Morris Big Band”
Chroma Mixed Media’s Water
Water, the second-place winner of Musicworks’ 2018 Electronic Music Composition Contest, is a multimedia performance piece structured around changing states of water. It was composed collaboratively by three members of Chroma Mixed Media for a performance with the Co.Crea.Tive collective that took place at the Golden Saucer in Vancouver, British Columbia, on Earth Day (April 22)Continue reading “Chroma Mixed Media’s Water”
HAVN Records: Fronting Art Music in ‘The Hammer’
First came the band, then the space, then the label. The band is Haolin Munk, a jazz and hip-hop quartet formed in the early 2010s by drummer Aaron Hutchinson, tenor saxophonist Connor Bennett, alto saxophonist Chris Ferguson, and bassist Josh Wiener. The space is HAVN—Hamilton Audio Visual Node—a gallery and performance space just off JamesContinue reading “HAVN Records: Fronting Art Music in ‘The Hammer’”
Carmen Vanderveken is full of surprises
Quebec-born composer Carmen Vanderveken was commissioned by the Dutch annual festival Gaudeamus Muziekweek to write a piece for a quartet featuring Dutch bass clarinetist Fie Schouten. An earlier piece sheds light on the shape and sound of the music Carmen Vanderveken is after. In about two and a half minutes this “very short étude,” asContinue reading “Carmen Vanderveken is full of surprises”
Pleasure Calls, by Camae Ayewa and Carmel Farahbakhsh
Pleasure Calls is a collaborative, interdisciplinary installation and performance by Camae Ayewa and Carmel Farahbakhsh that activates revolutionary ways of loving one another. The installation is the culmination of a week-long residency in early March of 2019 at the Khyber Centre for the Arts, an artist-run centre for noncommercial work located in the historic HalifaxContinue reading “Pleasure Calls, by Camae Ayewa and Carmel Farahbakhsh”
The Musical Colours of Dominique Fils-Aimé
On the 2004 live-concert recording Tour de Force, the renowned American poet and musician Gil Scott-Heron introduces his 1981 song “Is That Jazz?”: “Go to your record store . . . look at the bottom shelf, you will find a box called miscellaneous. We are miscellaneous. We did not mean to be miscellaneous. Somehow itContinue reading “The Musical Colours of Dominique Fils-Aimé”
Wadada Leo Smith and the Possibilities of Dreaming
Think of this as a sketch. We’re not going to get into a complete report on the doings of Wadada Leo Smith here, his more than fifty recordings, his dozens of collaborations with luminaries from all over the globe, his long engagement with creative music. No, we’re merely orbiting the beautiful planet that is hisContinue reading “Wadada Leo Smith and the Possibilities of Dreaming”
Linda Catlin Smith Lets In the Light
It’s 2004. I am taking my first composition course at Mount Allison University. I have recently become enamoured of new music and am catching up on a long list of listening in the basement of the Alfred Whitehead Memorial Music Library. I come across Memory Forms (2001), a serene-looking disc with a still-life pear standingContinue reading “Linda Catlin Smith Lets In the Light”