jlagan
Of the 30 or more concerts that took place in Vancouver during ISCM 2017, the annual festival presented by the International Society for Contemporary Music, only a few involved orchestras. Naturally, due to the greater costs of larger musical forces, the majority of concerts in the festival were for smaller ensembles. It was, nonetheless, impressive … Read more
The World New Music Days festival has been held in a different country each year, since 1922. Organized by the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM), its stated purpose is “to present music from each of our members, showcasing the incredible diversity of musical practice in our time.” The 2017 edition of the festival, marketed … Read more
In 2009 Canadian poet Suzanne Steele was appointed as the first ever Canadian war poet, and served in Afghanistan with the 1st Battalion Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry as a part of the Canadian Forces Artist Program. She documented her experiences in her poetry and on her website, warpoet.ca. After her return home, she mentioned … Read more
Perfection, and in particular, the pursuit of perfection in the performing arts, can be an infectious thing. An artist who has attained a high standard of perfection cannot tolerate anything less than that standard in their ongoing work. Thus it was with pianist, composer and media artist Glenn Gould, whose obsession with and ability to … Read more
It’s November at last, in a more than usually acerbic election year in the USA, in the final days of a presidential campaign revolving in large part around a slogan about making America great again. All of which causes me to recall a moment in CBC Radio history, just over 40 years ago, that not … Read more
The announcement of Phillip Glass as the 11th recipient the Glenn Gould Prize this past April 14 gives us an opportunity to remember that Glenn Gould was himself an artist who walked amongst us. Although he was someone who changed the world of music in a number of significant ways, the fact remains that he … Read more
Artistic restraint within a new medium may signal aesthetic maturity, yet in the case of electro-acoustics one can be too polite. Rather than exploit every possible device the Canadian composer David Jaeger’s Sarabande for Viola and Tape, composed for Rivka Golani and played at her Wigmore Hall recital on 13 February, deployed tape feed-back purely … Read more