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Cage And Duchamp’s Reunion

FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY On the periphery of the dimly lit stage of Toronto’s Ryerson Theatre, four musicians are setting up musical instruments, laptops, and various musical gadgets in preparation for the evening’s all-night performance. Audio cables snake across the stage to converge in the centre, where a technician is plugging them intoContinue reading “Cage And Duchamp’s Reunion”

STEIM

FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY     Maybe someone would have been able to guess what I was getting myself into when I left for STEIM in The Netherlands. After all, there was a pretty clear sign. All passengers had boarded the plane, and we all were eager to get to our destinations or makeContinue reading “STEIM”

Dániel Péter Biró

FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY     Composer Dániel Péter Biró talks about his work in long, lucid sentences. He takes his time, he doesn’t double back or digress, and he rarely needs to correct himself. But just when you think his explanation is complete, he adds another layer. His music, too, is multi-layered, butContinue reading “Dániel Péter Biró”

Kristen Roos

FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY. Every musician in the world produces invisible waves when making music—such is the nature of sound. Relatively few musicians, however, are concerned with those waves once they are absorbed and processed by the auditory system of the listener. Kristen Roos is an artist who exploits the power of invisibleContinue reading “Kristen Roos”

James Rolfe

FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY. I first met James Rolfe nearly twenty years ago, when we were finalists in the 1990 edition of the CBC National Radio Competition for Young Composers. As a frequent visitor to Rolfe’s Toronto apartment at that time, I was afforded an insider’s view of the creative process behind many ofContinue reading “James Rolfe”

Tom Zé

FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY     The romantic Brazil—the one that ensnares tourists—does not include the Brazilian Northeast. Miles from Rio de Janeiro, this place is worlds removed from the urban sophisticates that dwell in the south. To Brazilians and northerners alike, the Northeast has its own mythology. Its interior, the sertão, is aContinue reading “Tom Zé”

Kay Larson. Where The Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists.

How very different the Western art world might have been—the structure of ideas, certainly, but also the structure of emotions, the hierarchy of belief—without the arrival in New York City in 1950 of a Japanese man who was “barely over five feet tall, and almost invariably wore sports jackets and slacks.” Dr. D. T. SuzukiContinue reading “Kay Larson. Where The Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists.”

ReR Megacorp.

If there were ever an ironic name for a record label, it is ReR Megacorp. The label originally consisted of two separate operations: Re Records and Recommended records. These labels were set up in 1978 by the English avant-rock group Art Bears (formerly Henry Cow) and drummer Chris Cutler, out of dissatisfaction with the musicContinue reading “ReR Megacorp.”

Fleshtone Aura. On Rusticated Slant.

Similarly to his other group, Gastric Female Reflex, Andrew Zukerman’s Fleshtone Aura project is an act of cheeky historical revisionism. Evoking the rubbery tactile sonics of musique concrète through jump-cuts and slippery tape-speed bends, Zukerman’s pieces are also littered with delightfully psychedelic humour. Side one of this twelve-inch 45rpm vinyl disc begins with pieced-together microscopicContinue reading “Fleshtone Aura. On Rusticated Slant.”