In 2017, choreographer Yvonne Ng commissioned Nick Storring to compose music for a piece with five dancers to be performed at the Banff Centre, a circumstance requiring Storring to depart from his characteristically dense works with multiple layered instruments. His solution was a tape piece that was restricted to multiple pianos, making the most ofContinue reading “Nick Storring. Music from Wéi 成为.”
Genre Archives
Trase Pa: Choreographing the Soundworld of David Bontemps’s Traces
In most cultures there has always been a synergetic interplay between music and dance—one informing and amplifying the other. Music exemplifies the physicality and rhythmicity that exists in a dancing body. The synergy of dance and music is a repertoire of invitations to the spaces in between—where syncopation meets breath and elicits feeling, and whereContinue reading “Trase Pa: Choreographing the Soundworld of David Bontemps’s Traces”
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”
The Passion and Curiosity of Barbara Hannigan
“An absolute stroke of luck for opera” is just one of the countless accolades Canadian-born, Amsterdam-based soprano Barbara Hannigan has received for her performances of both classical and contemporary music. Composers and musicians she has worked with are unanimous in their praise. She has premiered a large number of major works, among them operas withContinue reading “The Passion and Curiosity of Barbara Hannigan”
The Evolution of The Muted Note
The Muted Note is a marriage of music, dance, and poetry—specifically, the poetry of the late Canadian writer P. K. Page. Her work was the unexpected catalyst for the first creative collaboration between Scott Thomson and Susanna Hood, both of whom were long-time linchpins of Toronto’s artistic scene before moving to Montreal in 2010. TrombonistContinue reading “The Evolution of The Muted Note”
Casa Da Música Builds A Home For Experimental Music
FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY 1497. Lisbon, Portugal. Navigator Vasco da Gama commands the first ship to sail from Europe to India. During the fifteenth century Portugal’s navigators are at the cutting edge of innovation and world discovery, their travel exploits feats of experimental technique. While Vasco da Gama discovered the world’s vastness andContinue reading “Casa Da Música Builds A Home For Experimental Music”
Jocelyn Morlock
FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY Jocelyn Morlock had purple hair for years. “It was indigo, in fact.” She narrows it down further: “Like an eggplant.” Specificity of colour matters to Morlock, not the least in music. “Colour: That’s what I think about when I hear somebody’s work I like,” she says. Morlock can beContinue reading “Jocelyn Morlock”
Merce Cunningham Dance Company: the final Event. NYC, USA. December 31, 2011.
It is with wistfulness and admiration that I’m writing a review of the last-ever Merce Cunningham Dance Company Event, the second of two shows at the Park Avenue Armory last New Year’s Eve. Wistfulness, for obvious reasons: this performance marked the end of a cultural institution that since 1953 has fostered a unique intermedia practice,Continue reading “Merce Cunningham Dance Company: the final Event. NYC, USA. December 31, 2011.”
Montreal New Music International Festival: 5th Edition. Montreal, Canada. February 18–26, 2011.
Being assigned to cover a new music festival such as Montréal/Nouvelles Musiques is somewhat like being thrown into a different space-time (and sound) continuum—one suddenly has the impression that new music is all there is to be heard all over the city, with ensembles, performances, and venues filled with enthusiastic audiences experiencing nothing but newContinue reading “Montreal New Music International Festival: 5th Edition. Montreal, Canada. February 18–26, 2011.”
Joëlle Léandre
For Joëlle Léandre it all begins and ends with the double bass. After playing the often unwieldy bull fiddle from the age of nine and carefully studying its intricacies, she creates with it sounds so personal that defining them as free music, new music. or anything else, is beside the point. Since the late 1970s, Paris-basedContinue reading “Joëlle Léandre”