Editorial

This issue of Discourses in Music features current events in the world of music making animated by a focus on person-to-person dialogue. In a compelling smorgasbord of live discourse, Sean Bellaviti offers an in-depth interview with Argentina-born composer Alejandro Viñao during his visit to the University of Toronto’s annual New Music Festival. An intriguing volley of pointed questions and lucid responses, this interview suggests avenues of musical thought from a perspective that is at once active and reflective. Bellaviti points out in his introduction that ideas of musical perception form a constant theme in the interview, but topics range from musical nationalism to issues of audience reception, and the relationship of popular music to art music.

In a second interview from the New Music Festival, Roger Mantie continues Discourses’ theme of live engagement as he discusses the act of composing with Christopher Pierce, the recipient of this year’s Karen Kieser prize in composition. Mantie’s and Pierce’s dialogue revolves around the award-winning composition, Melody with Gesture, but their discourse at times assumes a life of its own, touching the current issues of the impact of technology on composition and the relationship of “composers” to “singer/songwriters.”

Mark Laver’s review of Still Life with Commentator, a recording collaboration by pianist/composer Vijay Iyer and hip hop artist/librettist Mike Ladd, falls happily between the artistic ideas of both Pierce and Viñao. Laver offers a compelling overview and a critical listener’s perspective, as well as in interesting look at the social perspective that fuels the album. Following this issue’s spirit of current discourse, Laver presents an album that might be viewed as a dialogue between performers where the intersection of composition and song writing discussed by Bellaviti, Mantie, Pierce and Viñao is transformed into a unique Iyer and Ladd sound.

-Jamie Younkin