Stéphane Roy

Posted on January 21, 2026 by Mark Mushet

My most recent cover image for Jean-François Denis’ formidable Electro CD label in Montreal is for this incredible, current, and award-nominated release by Stéphane Roy. It is my second for him. It came about quickly once Stèphane told me the lead piece was titled Après, les Cendres and had a somewhat apocalyptic vibe.

Oh yes. I can do that. And the times are perfect for it. Naturally, as with many of my artworks for music, things are not what they seem, though the road here actually is a stretch of highway during a major fire in Washington State. But the top half? Part sun, part ocean organics. Fusion of a different sort.

Funnily enough, the title was changed to Coups de Foudre which translates into, essentially, two things simultaneously “Lightning Strike” or “Love at First Sight”. I’ll take both!

My conversations with Stéphane suggested an in-person meeting in Montreal would be a wonderful and rich connection and I hope to make it happen some day.

https://empreintesdigitales.bandcamp.com/album/coups-de-foudre

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Manuella Blackburn

Posted on January 21, 2026 by Mark Mushet

Of the many music-related projects I’ve done, those stemming from my ongoing relationship with Manuella Blackburn and David Berezan have been among my favourites. The two are an electro-acoustic composition power couple (that’s just fun to say!) who compose, write, and teach in Manchester, England. I’ve done three covers for Manuella and each time the process involves a discussion of the nature of certain key pieces, potential forms and palettes, then some back and forth where I build something new from existing elements. These two are prime examples. The latest, Interruptions, features music created with microplastics so I focused on that to create a kind of waveform image that reflected the colours often associated with industrial plastics. The CD also has a wonderful piece created from the sounds of failing Fairlight computers which, some will recall, were around in the 1980s and were used by the likes of Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush!

Please check out her work at the links below:
https://www.manuellablackburn.com/
https://empreintesdigitales.bandcamp.com/album/interruptions

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VOX Electronica

Posted on April 24, 2025 by Mark Mushet


This is the poster for Vancouver Pro Musica’s blowout weekend of new music. While the main event is the Sonic Boom Festival there was this adjacent concert featuring specially commissioned works for electronics and voice. It is such a rich subject! My first thought was to somehow involve a rendering of human vocal cords but all the medical illustrations that popped up were a little too, um, provocative (go ahead, search it)! So I instead raided my floral image bank and mirrored a shot from one of my iPhone walkabout series. Perfect! We have a fair evocation of vocal cords and a deeper sense of mystery and diversity of form. This was also used for lightbox ads, brochures, electronic billboard and the printed program. It has become a favourite so far this year…and it’s only March!

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Friends of Chamber Music’s 77th Season Posters

Posted on April 24, 2025 by Mark Mushet

I’m very happy with this year’s poster series for Friends of Chamber Music’s 77th Season. But I’m sad that long time board president and beating heart of the organization for decades, Eric Wilson, took his final bow earlier in the year. Still, there is a 78th Season already on deck!

In the case of this series, I was originally planning to hire an illustrator. But she decided to move across the country just as I needed to get the project started! So I went to my image bank. There are clouds and waves, forces of nature, random but organized, powerful yet delicate. Passionate and cold. All things great performances bring to an audience at different times in different measures!

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The Return of Saxophilia

Posted on June 8, 2023 by Mark Mushet

I’ve just designed a new CD package for Colin MacDonald’s superb new music sax quartet, Saxophilia. The group is performing new work in concert again so I also designed two posters for performances over the summer of 2023. The font is, once again, “Restraint” by Marian Bantjes and Ross Mills. The poster images are from my ongoing body of ICM work centred on natural elements and the play of light in relation to time and gesture. The CD cover image came from a tabletop session done during covid originally intended for an ambient video series.

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Friends of Chamber Music’s 75th Season Posters

Posted on February 1, 2023 by Mark Mushet

For this season’s look I decided to riff on the cyanotype and the x-ray or “Ray-o-gram” process from photography’s experimental days of olde! This was inspired by an exhibit by Jonah Samson that I reviewed early in 2022 for Galleries West. Jonah has spent a great deal of time creating cyanotypes from natural materials and I recalled emulating the process for some editorial stories I needed to illustrate years ago. I thought it would be a bold and striking way to market chamber music so I gathered various instrument parts and did some scanning and tweaking to get the graphic effect you see here. Font is the bold and reliable standard for vertical readability; Poster Gothic

Sooner or later, over ten concert posters, you get tired of all the blue!

And one last poster for the Emerson Quartet’s last ever Vancouver appearance.

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Veda Hille – Time

Posted on September 11, 2022 by Mark Mushet

This is a still from a new video I did for Veda Hille’s dreamy setting of a WH Auden poem which appears on her excellent 2022 release Beach Practice

You can see the video here:

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Jay Cabalu’s Extra!

Posted on July 11, 2022 by Mark Mushet

This portrait accompanied my Galleries West review of Jay Cabalu’s wonderful show Extra! at On Main Gallery, curated by Paul Wong. We met up at The Crescent in the Shaughnessy neighbourhood of Vancouver and did a walkabout in the arboretum, which remains an under utilized park in what was once the home to our great colonial coal barons and thieves.

https://www.gallerieswest.ca/magazine/stories/jay-cabalu/

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New Faces at Early Music Vancouver

Posted on July 11, 2022 by Mark Mushet

These are the new official portraits of Early Music Vancouver’s concert master Chloe Meyers. She’s appeared with EMV many times over the years but these are the official portraits in advance of the 2022 Bach Festival. If you’ve not attended any of their concerts they are some of the most diverse among all the city’s music presenters. Check out their events at:

https://www.earlymusic.bc.ca/

 

 

 

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Upstaged!

Posted on November 15, 2019 by Mark Mushet

I’ve done many portraits of BC author/legend George Bowering over the years but this one was a little different. Asked by the publisher to think “So you want it darker?” (in reference to Leonard Cohen’s final album) I had George ascend the stage at the legendary Penthouse Nightclub for a kind of dark stand-up look to introduce a new collection of essays. Last Essays was the working title but I prefer it for this image which, if you know George’s usual broad smile for the camera is kind of funny…in a dry way! I used the font Landmark (recently used for Friends of Chamber Music’s poster campaign) because it had the right kind of “showbiz” feel.

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