SHOULD YOU EVER FIND YOURSELF IN A CONFINED SPACE WITH ERIN GEE, PREPARE TO BE ENTERTAINED, AND PERHAPS ALSO PUZZLED—AT LEAST BRIEFLY. “If someone meets me in an elevator,” she tells Musicworks in a telephone interview from her office in downtown Montreal, “my elevator pitch is that I explore the communicative potential of the human voice inContinue reading “Erin Gee Sings the Body Electronic”
Author Archives: Musicworks
the centre is wherever
Are you experienced? Even if you haven’t strapped on a virtual reality headset to interact with brave new computer-simulated worlds or to visit real-life remote locations (Mount Everest!) or to watch 360° music videos, news documentaries, and pro-sports games, you know that V.R. is here. Earlier this year, I started wondering about the role ofContinue reading “the centre is wherever”
Daniel Blinkhorn’s frostbYte—wildflower [ONLINE EXCLUSIVE]
Daniel Blinkhorn is an Australian composer and sound and new-media artist currently residing in Sydney. He has worked in a variety of creative, academic, research, and teaching contexts. An ardent location field recordist, he has embarked on many recording expeditions; his sonic travels have taken him throughout Africa, Alaska, the Amazon, the West Indies, NorthernContinue reading “Daniel Blinkhorn’s frostbYte—wildflower [ONLINE EXCLUSIVE]”
Ocean Bug and Bird Songs
BORN CONFUSED. FLY AT LIGHT. Tonight you June bugs pelt my office window in a relentless barrage—desperate wings fanning air that will not hold and tap-tap-tap-tap-tap on the glass. I turn off the lights, sneak outside, guide you through the yard by the glow of my phone. A conductor of insects. Flap-flap-flap-flap-flap. We serenade eachContinue reading “Ocean Bug and Bird Songs”
Dasha Rush: Dark Hearts of Space
The prospects are grim for a person who has fallen into a black hole. The gravitational forces exerted by these mysterious regions of space are so strong that nothing—not even light—can escape, once it passes a certain proximity threshold. From a safe distance, the unlucky soul would appear to stretch and smear as it approachedContinue reading “Dasha Rush: Dark Hearts of Space”
New Stages For New Music
Intense purple LED light washes over the Thin Edge New Music Collective (ABOVE PHOTO) as they scramble to soundcheck, seeming to heighten the chaotic mood at Long Winter, Toronto’s monthly interarts festival series during the coldest season. Two different sources of electric guitar bleed into the room from other performance spaces inside the historic, ramblingContinue reading “New Stages For New Music”
Public Recordings’ what we are saying
“Is being together possible?” The first words spoken in what we are saying, a sound–dance piece by the Toronto-based experimental performance company Public Recordings, have a disruptive effect—an abrupt imposition of language into an initially wordless and ambient sound environment, presenting the basis for what’s to come: a language-propelled choreography of sounds, bodies, objects, andContinue reading “Public Recordings’ what we are saying”
Burden Unpacks the Piano’s Inner Life
At the 2016 Winnipeg New Music Festival, the members of Burden and their synecdochical piano are set up in the midst of a noisy, beer-swilling crowd at Union Sound Hall. Without so much as a word of introduction to attract attention, they assume positions on three sides of the piano and begin. The only noiseContinue reading “Burden Unpacks the Piano’s Inner Life”
The Idiosyncratic Musicality of Marc Sabat
The emergence of Arnold Schoenberg’s twelve-tone technique in the early 1920s not only presented an altogether new conception of pitch in music, it also prompted a dramatic and widespread shift in the fundamental thinking surrounding Western concert music. Its latent quasiscientific implications precipitated a number of new systems of composition. As composers foraged for newContinue reading “The Idiosyncratic Musicality of Marc Sabat”
crys cole amplifies personal space
I first saw crys cole perform in a tiny gallery in Winnipeg’s Chinatown. Seated with a contact mike, a pane of glass, and little else, cole reflected the minimalism of her setup in quiet soundscapes and restrained gestures. Immediately, she had the room under her command. There was a charged tension in the air, asContinue reading “crys cole amplifies personal space”