Spring 2016 issue of Canada's premier music magazine, including a 10 track CD of musicians featured in this month's magazine. Contents include:

Sound notes: Craig Aalders' el8dEra 3m

Announcing the winner, Musicworks' 2016 Electronic Music Composition Contest

Daniel Glassman

Tom Wayman's "Elemental Musics: Selkirk Mountains"

Announcing the winner, Musicworks 2016 Sonic Geography Writing Contest

Tom Wayman

Eighty-five scores celebrate Pauline Oliveros

STILL DEEP LISTENING

Still Listening: New Works in Honour of Pauline Oliveros (1932-2016) is a project initially conceived to mark Oliveros' eighty-fifth birthday on May 30, 2017.

Lawrence Joseph

All-Set! Editions: Essentially Not Jazz

LABEL PROFILE

Dapper Toronto imprint All-Set! Editions may be a newcomer to the subterranean ecosystem of experimental music distribution, but it already has a clearer sense of self than other more [...]

Nick Storring Features

Thin Edge New Music Collective Joins the Circus

Jennie Punter

The Astral Excursions of John Mills-Cockell

DREAM TRIPPING

The imagination of electronic composer John Mills-Cockell exists in a liminal space. His music, with its neon-pastoral glow, feels neither jarringly futuristic nor soothingly nostalgic.[...]

Jesse Locke Visions of sound

Amanda Dawn Christie's Requiem for Radio

PRESS PAUSE

In 2012 the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) began to tear down its Radio-Canada International towers in Sackville, New Brunswick (home to some 6,000 people and best known as the locale [...]

Kiva Reardon

Reviews:

Vicky Chow. A O R T A.

New Amsterdam Records, NWAM083.

Jonathan Bunce

Those Who Walk Away. The Infected Mass.

Constellation Records, CST122.

Nick Storring

Kid Koala, Featuring Emilíana Torrini. Music to Draw To: Satellite.

Arts & Crafts, AC129.

Mary Dickie

Just Got Death. Miella Totomi.

Sono Sordo, S01.

Ken Waxman

Mark Hannesson. Angels.

Edition Wandelweiser, EWR1612.

Nick Storring

Darcy James Argue Secret Society. Real Enemies.

New Amsterdam Records, NWAM081.

Ken Waxman

On the CD:

1 el8dEra 3m (2016) 6:40

Composed and performed by Craig Aalders (acoustic guitar, analog and digital synthesizers, analog effects, MaxMSP, field recordings).

Recorded at Pacific 70 Studios, Vancouver, B.C., August-October 2015. Mixed at Pacific 70 Studios, July-August 2016.

Ambient-electroacoustic piece that explores the relationship between sound, composition, and improvisation. -Craig Aalders © Aalders 7:56

2 Linen (2014) 8:40

Composed by Anna Höstman.

Performed by Thin Edge New Music Collective: Cheryl Duvall (piano), Suhashini Arulanandam and Ilana Waniuk (violins), Dobrochna Zubek (cello).

Recorded in concert at Gallery 345, Toronto, Ont., Februrary 21, 2014. Audio-video by Alison J. Gray and John Gray.

Based on the poem "White Linen" by Swiss author Robert Walser (1878-1956), who wrote in the tiniest pencil-scratchings imaginable. In composing it, I looked for possible ways to emulate Walser's approach musically, to construct "textures from tiny"- an extremely dense and closely knit series of events from small gestures. -Anna Höstman © Höstman 8:43

3 Le sel de la terre (excerpt) (2015) 6:49 AVAILABLE ON CD ONLY.

Composed by Patrick Giguère.

Performed by Thin Edge New Music Collective: Cheryl Duvall (piano), Sarah Yunji Moon (flute), Nathan Petitpas (vibraphone), Anthony Thompson (clarinet), Amber Walton Amar (cello), Ilana Waniuk (violin).

From the upcoming album Raging Against the Machine (Redshift Records, TK449, 2017).

Recorded at Glenn Gould Studio, Toronto, Ont., January 2015 by Dennis Patterson (audio engineer), Paul Hodge (assistant engineer). Produced by David Jaeger.

Some people-artists, craftsmen, ecologists, DIY workers, organic farmers, people whose first life concerns are not money and entertainment-are raging against the machine by their life choices and by having the courage to be who they are. Samuel Archibald, in his essay Le sel de la terre, calls these people le sel de la terre, and it is to them that I want to pay tribute with this work. -Patrick Giguère © https://ssl.gstatic.com/ui/v1/icons/mail/images/cleardot.gifGiguère -

4 Shards and Lemons (2017) 17:17 AVAILABLE ON CD ONLY.

Composed by Roscoe Mitchell and Craig Taborn.

Transcribed by Marc Hannaford. Orchestrated by Roscoe Mitchell.

Performed by the Montreal-Toronto Art Orchestra: Marilyn Lerner (piano); Lori Freedman, Yves Charuest, Kyle Brenders, Jean Derome, Peter Lutek, and Jason Sharp (woodwinds); Nicole Rampersaud, Craig Pedersen (trumpets); Tom Richards, Scott Thomson (trombones); Julie Houle (tuba); Jean René, James Annett (violas); Rob Clutton, Nicolas Caloia (double basses); Isaiah Ceccarelli, Nick Fraser (drums); Michael Davidson (vibraphone); Gregory Oh (conductor).

Recorded in concert and mixed live by Paul Hodge at The Music Gallery in Toronto, Ont., October 16, 2017.

"Shards and Lemons" is part of Conversations for Orchestra, a suite based on transcriptions of duo and trio improvisations with Craig Taborn and Kikanju Baku that have subsequently been orchestrated. This version is animated by various small-group improvisations, plus one full-ensemble improvisation toward the end of the piece. -Roscoe Mitchell © Mitchell, Taborn -

5 Ibistix (excerpt) (1971) 4:19 AVAILABLE ON CD ONLY.

Composed by John Mills-Cockell.

Performed by John Mills-Cockell (Arp 2500, Arp 2600, Hohner pianet, Vox Continental organ), Douglas Pringle (saxophone, bongos, bells, guiro), Alan Wells (congas, timpani, gong, tambourine), and the Toronto Repertory Orchestra, Milton Barnes conducting.

Recorded at Eastern Sound, Toronto. Produced by John Mills-Cockell and Eugene Martynec.

Originally released on the Syrinx LP Long Lost Relatives (True North Records, TNX-5). Reissued in the box set Tumblers from the Vault (RVNG Intl., 2016).

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6 Melina's Torch (1973) 4:02 Composed by John Mills-Cockell.

Performed by John Mills-Cockell (ARP 2500 Synthesizer).

Originally released on Side A of the solo LP Heartbeat (True North Records TN-12).

The first song I wrote for Syrinx was Melina's Torch, when I was commissioned to do a score at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa-my first experience in theatre. Greek actress and revolutionary Melina Mercouri was portrayed in the play, Party Day, and I dedicated the song to her. -John Mills-Cockell 4:05

7 Age of Discovery (1974) 3:04 AVAILABLE ON CD ONLY. Composed by John Mills-Cockell. Performed by Per Kynne Frandsen (organ) and soprano Susan Campbell.

Originally released on Side A of A Third Testament (True North Records, TN-17).

Composed for a film about mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal, the piece was performed in the Fredriksborg Castle using the Compenius organ, the oldest known functioning renaissance organ. One can hear the clattering of the bellows housed in a cupboard near the organ, operated manually by the bellows-operator's feet. -John Mills-Cockell Tracks 5-7 © Mills-Cockell, SOCAN. -

8 Forgetting Time, second movement of Eternity Gaze (2012) 6:41 AVAILABLE ON CD ONLY

Composed by John Oliver.

Performed by PEP (Piano and Erhu Project): Nicole Ge Li (erhu), Corey Hamm (piano), John Oliver (guitar).

From PEP: Piano and Ehru, Vol. 1 (Redshift Records, TK437, 2014).

Recorded in 2014 at Barnett Hall, UBC, Vancouver, B.C. Produced by Don Harder.

This second movement from John Oliver's four-movement work is actually a trio, with the composer on guitar. The erhu spins out a free-sounding melody, while the stopped piano and guitar play highly rhythmic isorhythmic layers that don't line up. -PEP © Oliver, SOCAN -

9 Her Fragrance On My Flesh (2016) 9:03

Composed and performed by Bret Parenteau.

This track is taken from Perfume Region (Sinnesloschen, SIN-03, 2016). © Parenteau 9:06

10 Spectres of Shortwave / Ombres des ondes courtes: falling towers (excerpt) (2016) 6:00

From a film directed by Amanda Dawn Christie.

Sound design by Bruno Bélanger and Amanda Dawn Christie. Contact mike and field recordings by Amanda Dawn Christie. Sound mix by Bruno Bélanger at Studio Prim, Montreal, Québec, March 2016.

Spectres of Shortwave is both a film and an electroacoustic audio documentary about the RCI shortwave radio towers in Sackville, New Brunswick, that transmitted from 1944 to 2012 and were demolished in 2014. Two years before the demolition, homemade contact microphones (both piezo disks and piezo film) were placed on the towers, halyards, and vertical stays of the transmission site. A library of recordings was made of the vibrations of the 400-foot-tall radio towers in the high marsh winds. Field recordings were also made during the demolition, in the midst of heavy machinery and winter winds. In this excerpt, you hear the "voices" (contact-mike recordings) of each tower. As each tower falls and crashes to the ground, its "voice" is first briefly amplified in a final breath, before it is removed from the mix altogether. -Amanda Dawn Christie © Christie 6:00