• About
    • Other writings
  • Patrons
  • The Lists
    • Listening History
    • Complete List of Ratings
    • Compositions explored on 5:4
    • Albums and EPs reviewed on 5:4
    • Festivals reviewed on 5:4
    • Best Albums of the Years
    • The Proms premières – Poll results
  • The Dialogues
  • Mixtapes
    • Mixtapes
    • The Isolation Mixtapes
    • Mystery Mixtapes
    • Podcasts
  • Contact
    • Contact Form
    • Submission Contact Form
5:4
Tag:

Canada

  • CD/Digital releasesFree music

    Yarn/Wire – Currents Vol. 8

    by 5:4 January 30, 2025 • 06:00
    January 30, 2025 • 06:00

    To conclude this month’s focus on post-festive free(down)loading, i’m turning to one of the Currents albums released by two-piano, two-percussion ensemble Yarn/Wire. Over the last decade, the quartet has released 10 albums in the Currents series, showcasing an array of works composed for them. Not surprisingly, with such a diversity …

    Read more
    1 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • Best of the Year

    Best Albums of 2024 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 December 31, 2024 • 00:00
    December 31, 2024 • 00:00

    And finally we reach the zenith, the apex of this year’s best albums, each and every one of them a bewilderment of shock, awe and wonder.

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • CD/Digital releases

    John Oswald – plexure ’24; plexures (Part 2)

    by 5:4 October 8, 2024 • 09:50
    October 8, 2024 • 09:50

    i stressed before the primacy of Plexure within the context of these two new albums. Yet the extent to which Oswald has been irresisitably drawn back to this work suggests that the idea of a ‘definitive’ version is meaningless. Indeed, the extensiveness of the so-called “bonus tracks” (most of which …

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • CD/Digital releases

    John Oswald – Plexure update

    by 5:4 October 5, 2024 • 10:26
    October 5, 2024 • 10:26

    Part 2 of my deep dive into John Oswald‘s extensive reissue of all things Plexure is coming soon. However, in the meantime there’s a time-critical update relevant for any other plex-heads out there. For this weekend only, Oswald has made available two additional Plexure-related items.

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • CD/Digital releases

    John Oswald – plexure ’24; plexures (Part 1)

    by 5:4 October 3, 2024 • 10:06
    October 3, 2024 • 10:06

    It seems as if an age has passed since i last wrote about the music of Canadian composer John Oswald. It was actually only four years ago, but a pandemic has come and gone during that time, which perhaps makes it seem longer. At that time, Oswald was beginning to …

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • CD/Digital releases

    Amy Brandon – Lysis

    by 5:4 August 23, 2024 • 10:04
    August 23, 2024 • 10:04

    Lysis is the name of Canadian composer Amy Brandon‘s latest album, featuring eight works for various chamber, ensemble and electroacoustic groupings. The word ‘lysis’ is a word with several meanings, mostly biological, primarily referring to the breakdown of cells. There’s something very apt in that choice of word for Brandon’s …

    Read more
    1 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • Festivals

    World New Music Days 2024, Faroe Islands (Part 5)

    by 5:4 July 27, 2024 • 09:36
    July 27, 2024 • 09:36

    Several events that i’d had high hopes for at this year’s World New Music Days turned out to be disappointingly underwhelming. Among them was the concert given by Danish choir ARS NOVA which, overall, featured surprisingly unadventurous repertoire, mostly standard text settings with almost nothing really exploring the voice as …

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • Festivals

    World New Music Days 2024, Faroe Islands (Part 2)

    by 5:4 July 9, 2024 • 10:18
    July 9, 2024 • 10:18

    Despite being primarily a chamber music festival, the concerts at this year’s World New Music Days in the Faroe Islands devoted significant time to works involving electronics. Five of these were installations, of which two were noteworthy. One was Ringar í Vatni [Rings in Water] by Faroese musician Heðin Ziska …

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • FestivalsPremières

    HCMF 2023 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 November 30, 2023 • 13:44
    November 30, 2023 • 13:44

    Ambient modes of expression, and listening, were brought to bear on two large-scale works during my long weekend at HCMF, both by Lithuanian composers. The less successful of the two was Hadal Zone by Žibuoklė Martinaitytė, which sought to be an hour-long sonic descent into the most abyssal oceanic depths. …

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • FestivalsPremières

    AFEKT 2023 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 November 10, 2023 • 06:00
    November 10, 2023 • 06:00

    Borders are places of confusion, uncertainty and, often, danger, and in this context concerts such as the ones previously discussed at AFEKT 2023 – where most works had strong similarities while one or two were markedly different – raised related questions. Is such similarity attractive and important because it suggests …

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • Premières

    Proms 2023: the premières (Part 3)

    by 5:4 August 30, 2023 • 16:20
    August 30, 2023 • 16:20

    Staunch conservatives don’t merely hold sway over our current government but also, it seems, our concert halls, judging by the latest desolation of premières at this year’s Proms. In the case of the Prelude and Fugue in G major by Rachel Laurin, posthumously premièred in Isabelle Demers’ organ recital, i …

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • FestivalsPremières

    Estonian Music Days 2023 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 May 23, 2023 • 11:53
    May 23, 2023 • 11:53

    Surely the most completely abstract music i heard at this year’s Estonian Music Days was Blue Moon Station by Latvian composer Alise Rancāne. The piece involved all six members of the Ensemble of the Estonian Electronic Music Society (EMA) huddled around a computer keyboard playing a video game projected on …

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • FestivalsPremières

    Dark Music Days 2023 (Part 3)

    by 5:4 February 11, 2023 • 19:10
    February 11, 2023 • 19:10

    The majority of the concerts at this year’s Dark Music Days were focused on chamber music. The most leftfield of these came courtesy of Trio Isak, in a concert titled ‘Ballet on the Moon’. That title in part derived from the opening piece on the programme, Daníel Bjarnason‘s White Flags, …

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • FestivalsPremières

    Dark Music Days 2023 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 February 7, 2023 • 16:34
    February 7, 2023 • 16:34

    Larger-scale works featured in several Dark Music Days events. One of the toughest to engage with was given by Caput Ensemble, a concert marred by the yawningly awful Polo by Simon Mawhinney, a quarter of an hour’s worth of relentless, faceless, arbitrary blarney. Veronique Vaka‘s Holos was marginally more interesting, …

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • FestivalsPremières

    HCMF 2022 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 December 1, 2022 • 15:24
    December 1, 2022 • 15:24

    This year’s composer in residence at HCMF, Lisa Streich, was represented by an appropriately large number of performances, allowing for a pretty deep dive into her musical thinking. If i say that a lot of what i heard of Streich’s music was more intriguing than immediately enjoyable, i need to …

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • Premières

    Proms 2022: Nicole Lizée – Blurr is the Colour of My True Love’s Eyes (European Première)

    by 5:4 August 1, 2022 • 14:31
    August 1, 2022 • 14:31

    Canadian composer Nicole Lizée‘s new percussion concerto, premièred last month in Ottowa, received its first European performance at the Proms last Friday evening. Its title, Blurr is the Colour of My True Love’s Eyes, though somewhat strange at first, perhaps suggests the two main aspects of the work. The first …

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • ConcertsPremières

    BEAST FEaST 2022: Resonances (Part 2)

    by 5:4 July 10, 2022 • 11:41
    July 10, 2022 • 11:41

    In the previous part i highlighted the works heard at BEAST FEaST 2022 that went against the grain and handled their materials with gentleness. However, not surprisingly the dominant compositional attitude was one aspiring to power and heft. Though unassumingly titled, Helena Gough‘s Yolk featured an almost flamboyant display of …

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • ConcertsPremières

    BEAST FEaST 2022: Resonances (Part 1)

    by 5:4 July 7, 2022 • 12:25
    July 7, 2022 • 12:25

    The key word, i think, is “feast”. There was something gloriously gluttonous about the quantity of music performed at BEAST FEaST 2022, though considering the festival was celebrating both the 40th anniversary of the founding of Birmingham ElectroAcoustic Sound Theatre and the recent 70th birthday of its founder Jonty Harrison, …

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • CD/Digital releases

    JH – APEIROZOAN

    by 5:4 June 11, 2022 • 18:21
    June 11, 2022 • 18:21

    far away and hidden in the lands beneath no moon,in gorges below pinnacles upon which dwell the dead,a cavern, overshadowed by encircling mountains, gapesbeneath a narrow vault across whose dark the stars are sped.from deep down in its cave there comes a sinister refrainthat resonates the barren, shadowed valleys with …

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • 20th CenturyCD/Digital releases

    Tālivaldis Ķeniņš – Symphonies Nos. 5 & 8

    by 5:4 May 19, 2022 • 17:01
    May 19, 2022 • 17:01

    A long-standing interest of mine is exploring symphonies by composers i’ve never heard of. Apropos: Tālivaldis Ķeniņš, who until relatively recently i didn’t know was one of Latvia’s foremost 20th century composers. However, Ķeniņš was arguably as much Canadian as Latvian; after Russia re-occupied Latvia during World War II, Ķeniņš …

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4

Subscribe to 5:4

Eesti Muusika Paevad / Estonian Music Days 2025 World New Music Days 2025 Nils Henrik Asheim: Lydkilder Sound and Image: Aesthetics and Practices Music Beyond Airports: appraising ambient music Simon Cummings | 間 Studies vol. 6

  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • Rss
  • Mixcloud
Footer Logo

© Simon Cummings

5:4
  • About
    • Other writings
  • Patrons
  • The Lists
    • Listening History
    • Complete List of Ratings
    • Compositions explored on 5:4
    • Albums and EPs reviewed on 5:4
    • Festivals reviewed on 5:4
    • Best Albums of the Years
    • The Proms premières – Poll results
  • The Dialogues
  • Mixtapes
    • Mixtapes
    • The Isolation Mixtapes
    • Mystery Mixtapes
    • Podcasts
  • Contact
    • Contact Form
    • Submission Contact Form