The rehearsal room at the community arts centre smelled of winter boots and varnish. Fluorescent lights hummed. Joe, nineteen and on fire, attacked a run of notes like enemies on […]

Jeff Burke had been playing bassoon in the Dundas Station tunnel for an hour, long enough that the rhythm of the trains were syncing to his phrasing. Toronto moved the […]

For years, a musician slept in fragments, ten minutes here, twenty there, always waking like someone had woke him from a dream before the note could resolve. His friends said […]

Felix Messer, pianist, part-time teacher, full-time cynic and distant relative of Don Messer, never intended to crawl into Bach’s head. It just happened, the way bad drugs or good revelations […]

There was a saxophonist, high-cheekboned, soft-spoken, known everywhere as a gentle man. The kind of sweetness people mention as if it were a credential. But sweetness can be a costume, […]

A dark shape moved between trunks. Then another. He slowed his breath. Another rustle. A twig breaking. He played the last line of the melody. Then a deer stepped out. […]

There was a musician who woke every morning with a committee of ghosts shouting in his skull,You missed the chord, you foolyou dragged the tempoyou’re aging, you’re slipping, you’re fraying […]

Arlo ran his mind like a strict place of business. No loitering. No wandering thoughts. Creativity was something you squeezed out like the last inch of toothpaste, or so he […]

After the show, the bar looked like a crime scene where no one bothered to move the bodies. Cables everywhere, glasses smudged, PA emitting a low hum as if it […]

Matthias spent most of his life believing musicians were born with two talents: playing their instrument and getting ripped off. He didn’t mind the small stuff. The promoter forgetting drink […]