On a breezy afternoon in early May, I met composer Allison Cameron and photographer Claire Harvie in the cheery little garden oasis behind Trinity St. Paul’s United Church in downtown Toronto. Allison’s compact studio is in the building, so she fetched her banjo, as well as an assortment of tiny, cool-looking amplifiers and transistor radios,Continue reading “Beautiful Contraptions”
Genre Archives
The Mystical Instruments of Walter Smetak
In March 2014, I found myself facing the late Walter Smetak’s Pindorama, a seven-foot-two-inch-tall instrument installation comprising seven calabash gourds arranged in a diamond-like formation and resting on a bamboo pedestal. Dozens of clear plastic tubes with flute mouthpieces fixed at their ends hung from the gourds. Cowbells were suspended from the frame. Later, duringContinue reading “The Mystical Instruments of Walter Smetak”
Send + Receive: A Festival of Sound, 16.
Send + Receive (s+r), a sound-art showcase held annually in Winnipeg, is curated around a different theme each year. Its acknowledged aims are to highlight the contributions of women to sound art, to develop an audience for emerging local artists, and to utilize different venues from one night to the next. This helps focus theContinue reading “Send + Receive: A Festival of Sound, 16.”
Rob Power. Touch.
Percussionist Rob Power, based in St. John’s, Newfoundland, is a musical jack of all trades, although contrary to the conclusion of the popular saying, he is seemingly a master of all of them. In addition to teaching at the percussion faculty at Memorial University, he performs with symphonies, rock bands, and improv groups, premiers concertosContinue reading “Rob Power. Touch.”
John Preus’ Slow Sound
On a brisk fall afternoon in October, about two dozen people hunkered down in the intimate main room of Chicago’s Experimental Sound Studio. They watched some of the city’s more open-minded musicians—including guitarist Leroy Bach and drummer Mikel Avery—improvise on instruments that looked and sounded familiar, yet stood apart for their sculptural beauty. The instrumentsContinue reading “John Preus’ Slow Sound”
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.”
Victor Gama builds a brave new soundworld
Wherever Victor Gama plays, you can be sure clusters of people will be jostling to percuss the upturned metal bowls of his tipaw (so called because the surface of the instrument looks like the pads of a tiger paw), to bow the eight metal strings of the tahra, or simply to wander the length ofContinue reading “Victor Gama builds a brave new soundworld”
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?”
The Ondes Martenot is Making New Waves
No one knows exactly how many functioning ondes Martenot are in use around the world today, but an informed, conservative estimate puts their number at sixty. In the course of half a century, Maurice Martenot, the creator of this most sensitive electronic musical instrument, was able to handcraft around 270 of them. More interested inContinue reading “The Ondes Martenot is Making New Waves”
Resonate
At first glance, Resonate appears to be a static, glowing, string structure in a dark, drone-filled room. But enter the space and pluck any of the glowing strings and dynamic pools of light suddenly appear, as sound objects form a rhythmic and spatial counterpart to the drones. The interactive light and sound installation was designedContinue reading “Resonate”