Is MUSICAlive?
Music IS Alive! In fact, Alive is really the only time that MUSIC really IS. Whether we’re pounding the water to get that deep, resonant drum, or pulling a cello bow across an amplified, distorted, tortured guitar string, or singing in massed harmony and then dissonance to create the excitation of ecstasy, MUSIC Alive – is!
And the people involved in living sound LOVE to talk about it . . . mostly. And when they don’t, WE will.
We’re not here to DEFINE what music is: that’s what listeners are for. We can curate the numberless possibilities, with the help of experts and readers, and showcase the sampled buffet here.
The rest is up to you.
Who are we?
Carey Rutherford
Swallowed by the mutual loves of words and music (but far too chicken-shit to perform them with a band), Carey’s writing career started slowly as a freelance writer in 2003, starved him nearly to personal bankruptcy until 2011, and changed directions while writing for FastForward, Beacon Calgary, GayCalgary, and Examiner magazines. With the death of many old-school periodicals, and the explosion of musical diversity in Calgary, the modern approach to writing about live music performance in the Calgary region presented uncluttered landscapes for the focussed passion that Carey’s conversations with musicians, drag queens, festival producers and small animals has uncapped. He was moulded by the brilliance of paper-based periodicals old and new (Life, rolling Stone, Swerve! and Adbusters etc.). Carey sees the info-verse as needing creative, empathetic, but clear-eyed Agents of Oscar (MUSICAlive!’s music and people-loving cat) to curate the possibilities into excellence!
Contact me by email: carey (at) musicalivemag.ca
Hannah Rutherford
Hannah has always had a discerning eye, so when her father asked her to help him with his new magazine as the editor, she readily agreed. Besides nitpicking, Hannah enjoys cuddling with her cats, reading an endless supply of books, watching movies, and trying to improve her video gaming skills. The last one isn’t going so well.
Contact me by email: hannah (at) musicalivemag.ca
Ivy Miller
Ivy has a degree in Creative Writing which she uses on a daily basis in Facebook posts and tweets. Her hobbies include writing novels, making films, and blogging. She hopes to someday be a stay-at-home dog owner. The proudest achievement of her life was running away to Paris without telling anyone. She’s back now, unfortunately.
Contact me by email: ivy (at) musicalivemag.ca
Paul Verhaegh
Music is oxygen for the soul. And there is so much music out there that you don’t even know about. If you like writing and needs some oxygen now and then, writing about music is a natural combination.
My love for music made me take piano lessons. After a few years it became clear that it didn’t really stick with me. Nor did the trumpet, which I tried to learn too. Well, maybe I should have tried it earlier in life. Starting it your thirties is a bit late, even when it is in your early thirties! A lasting legacy of this episode is that I realized that making music is like giving a speech without reading it from paper, although there are exceptions, like orchestras. But once started a song or tune it sounds like they just go with the flow, or, as the expression goes, are taken away by their own muse.
Contact me by email: paul (at) musicalivemag.ca
Theresa Johnston
When TJ arrived in Calgary, after raising aardvarks just outside the city limits, she knew she had her work cut out for her: as petroleum prices are affected by the aardvark supply, TJ found the regulation of the local industry challenging at the extreme. This catalyzed her interest in aeronautics, with its specialization in aardvark phylogny, and subsequently TJ developed Canada’s first low-speed rail transport, pulled by organically-fed aardvarks, and thus the low-impact transportation infrastructure which is named for her. Lastly, her favourite food, aardvark soup, must never be discussed when travelling on the TJ Low-Impact Transit system.
Also, she likes messing with pictures.
Contact me by email: tj (at) musicalivemag.ca
Allen Thai
Allen has always been a fan of writing. Specifically non-fiction. But he didn’t start off being a good writer by simply just “wishing to be one”. Nope. He took the initiative to get schooled at the prestigious University Of Calgary, attaining a Bachelor of Communications. Not, however, before getting a high school diploma through a great amount of summer courses to make it possible. Afterwards he turned his attention to SAIT, something that he thought could benefit and tune his writing ability: he was dead wrong. Digital Graphic Communications did not focus on any writing whatsoever (that was Journalism). It moreso was about printing and press. So from the beginnings of picking up a novel at age 8, to now writing for MUSICAlive!, Allen carries through the same passion and grit, to succeed and excel in anything he does. And not to mention his physical appearance is as pleasing to look at as the David was, artistically/aesthetically sculpted by the great Michaelangelo. (That was a joke btw: LOL!)
Contact me by email: allen (at) musicalivemag.ca
MUSICAlive! Magazine acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Periodical Fund (CPF) of the Department of Canadian Heritage.
The MUSICAlive! Logo was designed by Tag Media Solutions.