Susan Alcorn moves through life in methodical motion, a few beats slower than the usual rapid flow. At the 2020 edition of Toronto’s Women From Space festival, held in mid March, the pedal steel guitarist’s entrancing performance made the Burdock Tavern feel as if clocks had frozen and the room had entered zero gravity. InContinue reading “Susan Alcorn’s Vibrant Deviations”
Genre Archives
Jordan Nobles. Chiaroscuro.
When our ancient ancestors gazed up at the tiny dots of light illuminated against the inky black darkness of the night sky, they were captivated by the mysterious and beautiful spectacle displayed before them. The award-winning Vancouver composer Jordan Nobles clearly shares this fascination with the cosmos—his Redshift Records is named after a term of measurementContinue reading “Jordan Nobles. Chiaroscuro.”
New Hermitage. Unearth.
Unearth is a fitting title for the fifth full-length release from the Halifax- and Montreal-based improvisational quartet New Hermitage: spectral yet grounded, these recordings capture a group of musicians committed to the perception-shifting possibilities of close attention. The four players who make up New Hermitage—Andrew MacKelvie, India Gailey, Ross Burns, and Ellen Gibling—cite Pauline Oliveros’sContinue reading “New Hermitage. Unearth.”
Hope Lee. Across the Veiled Distances.
Covering almost four decades of Hope Lee’s writing for the piano, Across the Veiled Distances encompasses a wide musical investigation in a retrospective album of her evolving relationship to the instrument. Through five works, Lee layers foreground and background piano gestures, balancing moments of deliciously angular dissonances with delicately evolving lines. Featuring thoughtful interpretations fromContinue reading “Hope Lee. Across the Veiled Distances.”
The Many Trajectories of Erin Rogers
Erin Rogers and Dennis Sullivan are facing each other on the stage of Manhattan’s Le Poisson Rouge in late February of 2020, a small table of gear between them. They take turns triggering samples of sportscasters by pounding large, illuminated buttons as if playing bare-knuckle Whac-a-Mole, altering sample speeds with joysticks and catch-and-releasing looped phrases.Continue reading “The Many Trajectories of Erin Rogers”
Neither Here Nor There: Musical Identity in the Global Flow
It is impossible to stand still nowadays in the face of worldwide security concerns. With climate change, wars, oppressive political climates, and alarming epidemics, the ability to move around physically has become a humanitarian necessity for many. The commodification and hyperrealism of the Internet produce spaces that everyone now negotiates with trepidation. The rise ofContinue reading “Neither Here Nor There: Musical Identity in the Global Flow”
Women from Space Festival.
Music always comes from somewhere—some particular where. And the most particular place is identity. The name that Bea Labikova and Kayla Milmine chose for their newly founded festival, Women from Space, simultaneously denotes the first place and the furthest: woman, space—the one where we come from, the other where we go. The festival’s four nightsContinue reading “Women from Space Festival.”
Anthony Pateras: Sonic Phenomena in Real Time
The music of Anthony Pateras covers vast expanses of composition and improvisation, of acoustic and electronic instrumentation, and combinations of these. He is also a virtuosic pianist. Between 2012 and 2019 he created Immediata, an ambitious series of fifteen albums, self-released over seven years, of music created in various modes and contexts, in order to explore howContinue reading “Anthony Pateras: Sonic Phenomena in Real Time”
Anna Höstman / Cheryl Duvall. Harbour.
As a child, Anna Höstman loved to play piano. She gave a performance of her earliest written work at age twelve, a joyful experience that she later compared to setting a boat on a river and being carried downstream. On Harbour, recorded at Toronto’s Glenn Gould Studio, and the first release devoted entirely to Höstman’sContinue reading “Anna Höstman / Cheryl Duvall. Harbour.”
Works by Alberta composer Mark Hannesson featured on three Edition Wandelweiser Records albums
Neil Young’s music is maybe one of the last things one would associate with Wandelweiser, the international collective of composers known for their copious silences, extended durations, and soft dynamics. However, on Albertan member Mark Hannesson’s guitar work If I appear comfortable, one hears echoes of Young’s forlorn solo guitar score for Jim Jarmusch’s 1995Continue reading “Works by Alberta composer Mark Hannesson featured on three Edition Wandelweiser Records albums”