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8 years ago

Volume 9 Issue 3 - November 2003

  • Text
  • November
  • Toronto
  • Jazz
  • Theatre
  • December
  • Symphony
  • Musical
  • Arts
  • Composer
  • Choir

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SNAP SHOTS, CONTINUED FROM PAGE 8 show, combining'the post cards, the John Oswald CD, the book, the audio art show, concerts, and workshops for music students. It all seems rather extravagant at present. But it will happen, at least on a small scale. FOLLOW UP , You mention that this is anniversary number 25. How far back do you go with the magazine, and in terms of "original inspiration" who, and what, is still around? Musicworks has always been "aPtistrun," and I think all of us are still around, as advisors, writers and artists. It has been a community effort from the start, begun by Peter Anson and Andrew Timar in 1978 in the offices of the Music Gallery. ' I wrote a few articles for it in the early years. Andrew and Peter asked me to interview James Tenney in that first year, which I-did. Much later I learned ~t this was the first article published about him - though there had been a chapter about him in a book called Desert Plants. that came out two years earlier. After a few years John Oswald became the Musicworks editor then Tina Pearson, then I became editor in 1988. It was during Tina's editorship that she and John came up with the innovative idea of creating an audio cassette related to the theme of each issue. At that time there was no other magazine linking print with sound·by including recordings. Each issue of the magazine had a specific theme - Electroacoustics, Animals and Music, Bridging Language, Cross Cultural Exchange, Sound Ecology, Radiophonics - sometimes a provocative one such as John Oswald:s title for issue 34 "There is no Reasoll'to Believe that Music Exists." Linda C. Smith, Gordon Monahan and Tim Wilson were occasional guest editors during that period, organizing theme issues. More recently we've adopted what we call sequential themes, so that a theme continues from issue to. issue. This gives an opportunity for readers to respond, for writers to propose additional articles, and for themes of varying lengths to develop, from three articles to ten or more. We have guest editors for these as well, for example John D.S. Adams' series of articles on David Tudor. We track the many themes through our back issue catalogue, where you can look up a topic like "improvisation" and get a list of all the related articles in the. past twenty-five years. N O VEM BER 1 - D ECE MB ER 7 2003 At WlwleNote we use pretty rough­ 'and-ready criteria for what constitutes "new 11U1Sic ". \.Wien you say "composers, sound anists involved in sound exploration" I sense that you have a clearer idea of who you'd include. \.Wiere do you draw lines? · Musicworks tries to link adventurous listeners with innovative forms of music: music that does not come with its definition already in place, as do classical forms of jazz, opera, bluegrass - the usual categories. Our articles are about artists who are heading into unfamiliar areas .• where a listener can be fairly sure that the experience will not conform with pre-existing expectations. In a sense this is the opposite of the way the music industry works, where you usually have to have a category, or your CD will not be carried in music stores. "Which section should they put it in?" is a question sometimes asked even before anyone listens. Any experience of sound, whether in a film or an art gallery, can be included. But there has to be something new to say about the role of sound in the piece. Recordings of people speaking (included in a lot of visual arts and video projects) or sound recordings intended primarily as illustration (for instance, traffic sounds accompanying urban visuals) would not be included. Sometimes I've said, in jest, that Musicworks is aliout music you can talk about. There are many valid forms of music that exist on their own terms, independent of language, that you can describe, and even theorize about, but you can't really say much about them beyond that. This is one of the limitations of the print medium: you have to line up your words on a one-dimensional line, starting here and ending there. No simultaneity is possible, and thus reading can never accurately reflect ~e multi-dimensional nature of expenence. ' Along, with your magazine, what would you say are the key resQurces out there for people whose interest has been sparked by this "snapshot"? The most important resource is the ,event itself: go out and listen. Experiencing concerts and sound installations is the best way to learn more. There are also other publications and plenty of web sites. Begin by searching for the name of an artist you know something about, and you can follow that lead into many exciting and previously ~own territories. • "Dolin's cello tone has a ' cQmmanding intei1sity; ideal for uncovering th .. e c.onter!1.plat·1·.·v ..·.·.e ..•. sources ot the > generqns; · · mel6dies/' ..., ''[Rich:ard Ray!Il(},nd]keep~ usJ rom b¢ing:\ · bpre~, , and he.is< gbviou~lyqui!e c a virtupso: the; . whole '.tliing sounds easy as pie." American Record Guide, USA 11

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