Skip to content

Musicworks

Author Archives: Musicworks

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”

Tanya Tagaq Grabs The World By The Throat

Watching Tanya Tagaq perform is more than just an auditory and visual experience: it’s physical. As the Nunavut-born, Manitoba-based throat singer moves around a stage, she unleashes something fierce and powerful that comes from deep within her body, yet seems positively unearthly. She mostly improvises her performances, tapping into traditional Inuit throat singing—growling, cooing, howling,Continue reading “Tanya Tagaq Grabs The World By The Throat”

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”

What is an instrument?

One late November day last year, during a family visit to Amsterdam, I stepped out after dinner and took the tram to Oostenburg, a former harbour hub near the city centre and now being redeveloped as a mixed-use area. After several wrong turns I found the trail-markers (pink birdhouses!) that led me to the canal-facingContinue reading “What is an instrument?”

Elastic Planets

Stepping into this black cube is like entering an intergalactic observation deck. Enveloped by mechanical whirs, buzzes and clicks, a parade of heavenly bodies is presented for inspection. This particular set is kaleidoscopic in colour, malleable in shape, kinetic in nature, frenetic in texture, as if the Painters Eleven had created their own solar system.Continue reading “Elastic Planets”

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”