I just recently found some reviews from February of this year. Surprisingly, Owen Maxwell of Ottawa Life Magazine positively reviewed the 1996 tape by my teenage screamo/lo-fi/noise-rock band the Skies Beg to Differ as a new release.

Kevin Jagernauth’s summary: Well, it took 22 years, but the first thing I ever recorded and released into the world — The Skies Beg To Differ debut album — has finally been reviewed, somehow, as a new release (thanks Bandcamp algorithms I guess?).

Mostly, I’m pretty pleased to read something I’ve played on described with the words “guttural blues-scream.”

Also, Jonathan Blumhofer of Arts Fuse reviewed the Hub New Music concert from Clark. He was not entirely convinced by my piece Songs of Friction but I appreciate that he listened closely and critically.

I just received word from Ottawa New Music Creators that I was selected to compose a piece for an upcoming concert by the Cowan-Cicchillitti Guitar Duo. The concert will take place on October 13 at a location that has yet to be determined.

A lot of students are saving their work for release on their own pages or via other services but I’m proud to share two pieces from Dylan Tovey’s MUSC270 (Senior Computer Music Tutorial) portfolio:

From MUSC142 (Recording Practice and Audio Art), Ethan Moncur’s “Don’t Talk”:

I put together this short Youtube playlist of my guitar/laptop performances from Ottawa and Edmonton in Spring 2018.

Here is the proposal that Melvin Backstrom and I submitted to the Society for Music Theory that was accepted for the November conference in San Antonio – “The Grateful Dead’s ‘Blues for Allah’: Syncretic Composition in Mid-1970s Rock Music”. This includes the abstract and supplementary diagrams.

Video of my composition Needing Space for 10-string classical guitar, performed by Julian Bertino in his Master’s Recital at University of Ottawa (Apr 27, 2018):

Videos of my MusCan performance can be seen here:

Broken Refraction at -36:45 (36:45 left in the video)
Randomly at -20:45
S(h)immer at -12:35

I’ll be playing Broken Refraction, Randomly, and S(h)immer on electric guitar with real-time digital processing at the MusCan conference at around 2:45 MDT (4:45 EDT) on Wednesday at the Betty Andrews Recital Hall on MacEwan University campus in Edmonton. The event is open to the public and will be livestreamed on MusCan’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/MusCanSoc/

After three great years at Clark, I have made the decision not to renew my contract this fall. I will be returning to Ottawa for at least a year at the end of May to attend to personal responsibilities. I look forward to the musical and teaching opportunities available there over the next year.

We just got word that Melvin Backstrom (VAP at UC Santa Cruz; PhD, McGill) and I have been accepted to give an analytical presentation on the Grateful Dead’s “Blues for Allah” at the annual conference of the Society for Music Theory (held in conjunction with the American Musicological Society) in San Antonio from Nov 1-4.