“Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms / Inside your head, and people in them, acting.” These lines from “The Old Fools,” English postwar poet Philip Larkin’s fearsome ode to aging, sparked Montreal composer Ana Sokolović’s full-length opera of the same title, which the Canadian Opera Company commissioned in late 2018 and is scheduled toContinue reading “Ana Sokolović wants you to enjoy her imagination”
Genre Archives
The Restless Sonic Architecture of William Kuo
Adjudicating applications for an emerging-composer program is a sort of high-volume evaluation scenario that necessitates a concentrated mode of listening in order to provide fair and sufficiently individualized appraisals. But every so often, you come across a candidate whose music is so immediately arresting that it shatters this hyperfocus and engulfs you. This is preciselyContinue reading “The Restless Sonic Architecture of William Kuo”
Lance Austin Olsen / Gil Sansón. Works on Paper.
The hypnotic double-disc set Works on Paper is the most recent collaboration between Victoria, B.C.-based composer and painter Lance Austin Olsen and Venezuelan composer and artist Gil Sansón. The stark, purposeful, expletive-laced monologue (courtesy of audio engineer and composer Alan F. Jones, who also runs the Marginal Frequency imprint) that is threaded through the openingContinue reading “Lance Austin Olsen / Gil Sansón. Works on Paper.”
Music In The Barns. Bolton-Godin-Oesterle.
While one no longer has to adopt postmodernism’s cheeky nihilism when referring to the past in exploratory musical domains, exhibiting this hungry curiosity in concert-music circles might still earn you the regressive neoromantic label. Toronto composer Rose Bolton addresses this threat with indifference and unvarnished earnestness in her string quartet The Coming Of Sobs (2008),Continue reading “Music In The Barns. Bolton-Godin-Oesterle.”
Mark Takeshi McGregor. Lutalica.
The word lutalica, invented by writer John Koenig in his Web-site and YouTube series Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, denotes the parts of one’s identity that are uncategorizable. For West Coast flutist Mark Takeshi McGregor, the word calls to mind the dissonance between his Japanese, Australian, and Canadian heritage and the Eurocentric nature of most classicalContinue reading “Mark Takeshi McGregor. Lutalica.”
Suoni per il Popolo Festival, 19th Edition.
Spread across four main halls and seven auxiliary venues, the sprawling 2019 Suoni per il Popolo Festival encompassed close to two hundred acts covering the musical spectrum, including electronic, jazz, rock, and the less easily classifiable. The festival is breathtaking in its scope, and—with most evenings presenting four or more simultaneous concerts—impossible to exhaustively cover.Continue reading “Suoni per il Popolo Festival, 19th Edition.”
Strata Festival, 8th Edition.
The two-page program for this year’s Strata Festival was headed by the words “Eighth Annual.” That surprised me. At no point did I sense the scale or the atmosphere of a festival that had been running for close to a decade; the crowd was sparse and the overall vibe I gleaned from overhearing certain attendees’Continue reading “Strata Festival, 8th Edition.”
Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville, 35th Edition.
There has always been something slightly enchanted about FIMAV’s existence. Sheltered in a small city between Montreal and Quebec City, Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville is devoted to musique actuelle (music of the moment), which embraces improvised music, free jazz, avant-rock, electronica, harsh noise, folkloric projects, and uncategorizable sonic eruptions from around theContinue reading “Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville, 35th Edition.”
Cluster New Music and Integrated Arts Festival.
Since 2010, Cluster New Music and Integrated Arts Festival in Winnipeg has been offering an annual space where musical inspiration meets modern technology and interdisciplinary art. Its tenth edition featured nearly three dozen artists presenting performances, installations, lectures, and workshops; while not explicitly stated as such, issues of identity, representation, and art as an instrumentContinue reading “Cluster New Music and Integrated Arts Festival.”
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”