Syrinx

Websites:  https://citizenfreak.com/artists/99670-mills-cockell-john
Origin: Toronto, Ontario, 🇨🇦
Biography:

Syrinx was a pioneering Canadian electronic trio formed in Toronto in 1970 by composer and keyboardist John Mills-Cockell, saxophonist Doug Pringle, and percussionist Alan Wells. The three were already deeply embedded in Toronto’s underground creative scene, where music, visual art, and modern dance were merging into new forms of expression. Mills-Cockell, classically trained at the University of Toronto and the Royal Conservatory of Music, had studied under Gustav Ciamaga and became one of Canada’s earliest practitioners of electronic sound. He even launched the Conservatory’s first open-enrollment electronic music course, inviting anyone “off the street” to explore the new frontier of synthesized sound. Among his students were Michael Hayden and Blake Parker, who later joined him in the avant-garde collective Intersystems, alongside architect Dik Zander. Intersystems pioneered multimedia happenings that combined poetry, light, architecture, and sound — helping to shape Canada’s emerging conceptual-art scene.

By 1968, Mills-Cockell had acquired one of the first Moog synthesizers ever built, personally ordered from Robert Moog himself. Drawn to its keyboard interface and real-time control, he began performing live with it, a rarity in North America at the time. Bands like Kensington Market and Hydro Electric Streetcar invited him to collaborate, fascinated by the strange new sounds he could coax from his modular rig. When Intersystems dissolved, he continued experimenting with improvisation and technology, eventually connecting with Wells, a percussionist versed in Latin and orchestral styles, and Pringle, a saxophonist active in Toronto’s free-jazz community. Their chemistry was instant and organic — Syrinx was never a planned “band” so much as a spontaneous convergence of ideas. They often jammed into the night, sometimes gathering in parks at two in the morning, “ingesting something or other,” as Mills-Cockell later recalled, and exploring sound until the neighbours complained.

From the outset, Syrinx defied musical boundaries. All three members were captivated by global music long before it was widely accessible in Canada. Wells and Pringle collected exotic percussion instruments and rhythms, while Mills-Cockell blended them with his synthesizers into fluid, cinematic soundscapes. Their first album, Syrinx (1970), was a landmark of Canadian electronic music — an atmospheric blend of modular synthesis, saxophone, and percussion that intrigued dancers, filmmakers, and painters as much as musicians. The Royal Winnipeg Ballet adopted their piece December Angel for a pas de deux, and its haunting “loon-like” synthesizer motif became a recognizable sonic signature. Critics and audiences alike struggled to classify the band, but artists immediately understood its significance: this was not pop or rock, but something exploratory and alive.

In 1971, Syrinx received an unexpected call from a CTV production team developing a new television series, Here Come the Seventies, asking them to compose the theme music. They recorded the piece, Tillicum, twice. The first take, a slow minor-key version, felt too subdued. On the morning of the second session, slightly hungover and armed with a bottle of Mateus Rosé, the trio decided to play it as fast as possible. The result was a brief, buoyant burst of Moog-driven energy — one minute and fifty-four seconds of pure electronic joy. Tillicum became a national phenomenon, reaching No. 38 on the RPM chart in June 1971, while the show’s opening visuals of a nude figure walking into the ocean burned into the collective memory of Canadian television.

That same year, conductor and composer Milton Barnes of the Toronto Repertory Ensemble commissioned the group to write a full orchestral work. The result was Stringspace, a four-part suite combining Syrinx’s core trio with strings and percussion, premiered on CBC Television’s Music to See and later recorded for their second album, Long Lost Relatives (1971). The LP represented the trio at their creative peak, balancing structure and improvisation, orchestration and electronics. During the sessions, however, a devastating studio fire destroyed much of their equipment, including Mills-Cockell’s Moog Mark II and several master tapes. Toronto’s artistic community rallied with a benefit concert, helping the band rebuild and finish the album — a testament to their standing within Canada’s creative class.

Syrinx’s music never followed commercial trends. Their albums were available only in Canada, and their touring circuit — Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritimes — reflected a modest, localized fame. Yet within that limited reach, they influenced a generation of musicians, dancers, and composers. When management later urged them to add a drummer and perform covers, the band complied briefly but soon disbanded, sensing that the spirit of the project had shifted. Mills-Cockell turned his focus to composing for theatre, film, and television; Pringle continued in jazz and film scoring; and Wells moved west to British Columbia, eventually leaving music behind for a new life. Mills-Cockell later spoke candidly about the years that followed — struggles with addiction, recovery, and the peace he eventually found living along Rosewall Creek on Vancouver Island, where the changing river became a metaphor for his own creative flow.

Decades later, when he revisited Syrinx’s music for the Tumblers from the Vault retrospective and performances such as Moogfest, Mills-Cockell described the process as “re-meeting expressive pieces of music that still have life in them.” Adapting the analog textures of his early instruments to modern digital gear, he found both challenge and renewal. “We were never a pop band,” he reflected. “We were part of something expressive and exploratory.”

Syrinx’s rediscovery in the 2010s reaffirmed what their contemporaries in Toronto’s art world had recognized all along: they were years ahead of their time. Blending early synthesizer technology with jazz improvisation, world percussion, and orchestral composition, they created a body of work that feels timeless — music that still breathes, fifty years later, with the same curiosity, spirit, and humanity that first gave it life.
-Robert Williston