Maria De Alvear is a consistently intriguing composer whose World Edition label also releases recordings of music by unique composers of concert music—most recently, Berlin-based Canadians Marc Sabat and Chiyoko Szlavnics. While Sabat is perhaps best known for his interpretations of works by Morton Feldman, Barbara Monk Feldman, John Cage, and notable Canadians like LindaContinue reading “Marc Sabat and Lorenzo Pompa, Wave Piano Scenery Player; Chiyoko Szlavnics, Gradients of Detail.”
Genre Archives
Harry Partch’s Delusion of the Fury.
A resonant boom rippling through your body—that is the impact of the Marimba Eroica, arguably the lowest-pitched percussion instrument in existence. Four thick slabs of wood up to eight feet long—each placed over a sizable resonator—make you feel rather than hear its monumental presence. It is one of the twenty-five-odd instruments built by composer HarryContinue reading “Harry Partch’s Delusion of the Fury.”
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?”
Beverley Johnston. Woman Runs with Wolves.
Woman Runs with Wolves, percussionist Beverley Johnston’s fifth solo release on Centrediscs, is undoubtedly her most eclectically programmed to date. Pulling from her sixty-plus commissions of Canadian composers’ work, the selections range across two decades of creation to shape a conflicting series of landscapes, from representative to metaphorical, personal to political, and spiritual to technological.Continue reading “Beverley Johnston. Woman Runs with Wolves.”
Antoine Beuger, Jürg Frey. Dedalus.
This CD documents the performance of two compositions by flutist Antoine Beuger and one by clarinettist Jürg Frey at a side space of Les Instants Chavirés in Montreuil, France. Beuger and Frey are both longtime members of Wandelweiser Group, a collective of international composers inspired by the post-Cage exploration of silence within composition, and theyContinue reading “Antoine Beuger, Jürg Frey. Dedalus.”
Fuhong Shi Closes the Distance
If Canada has any meaning to most Chinese, it is likely through a widely read essay written by the late Chairman Mao in praise of Dr. Norman Bethune, the Montreal doctor who ministered to Mao’s suffering soldiers during the Long March of the late 1930s. Musically, according to Lawrence Cherney, artistic director of Toronto musicContinue reading “Fuhong Shi Closes the Distance”
Giorgio Magnanensi in the Sonic Playground
Admirers of Giorgio Magnanensi—composer, conductor, teacher, and the artistic director of Vancouver New Music Society—tend to be lavish in their praise of him. “Giorgio is singularly the best conductor of modern music, period,” says composer and Capilano University jazz instructor Bradshaw Pack. Vancouver music critic Alex Varty calls him “one of the most outgoing, provocative,Continue reading “Giorgio Magnanensi in the Sonic Playground”
Standing Wave. Liquid States.
Standing Wave has a been a fixture on Vancouver’s new-music scene since 1991, exploring a wide variety of aesthetics commensurate with the varied backgrounds of its members. Liquid States, the ensemble’s third CD, documents four recent commissioned works for the ensemble. Jeffrey Ryan’s Burn alternates between slow, introverted—albeit colourful—melodicism and a slightly familiar-sounding uptempo jauntinessContinue reading “Standing Wave. Liquid States.”
David Rosenboom. In The Beginning.
Not unlike James Tenney, his late former colleague at York University, David Rosenboom is highly adept at taking rigorously structured systems and rendering them in a manner that is observable and bursting with sound colour. This two-disc set compiles the titular cycle of pieces whose creation spans 1978–81, each for different instrumentations. The album opensContinue reading “David Rosenboom. In The Beginning.”
Hywel Davies. Hywel Davies.
Composer Hywel Davies’ latest album is—surprisingly, given his prolific output—only his second solo album. The first, 1998’s Natural Language, was a beguiling collection of collaged sounds. This release, much of it recorded at the Banff Centre, is based in more conventional instrumentations: string quartets, duos, and a series of solo piano works. Composed over aContinue reading “Hywel Davies. Hywel Davies.”