All music is magic. It’s easy to become numb to it, in this hyper-online, easily streamed, only in my headphones era of music, but every so often that universal truth, that magic, can snap into focus. Watching Alex Maher build an entire song before your very eyes will do that to you. First a beat, then a groove. Synths, keys and guitar. He sings the words and melodies he wrote – or someone else wrote –  and then he blows the house down with his alto sax. And then, he does it again, and again and again. Nothing prerecorded, all live.

This is how music is made and we all kind of know that. But to watch it happen is a privilege not afforded to fans of artists who would do it all themselves in the studio, like Maher’s musical hero Stevie Wonder. Live looping is still something of a novelty – Feist and Tash Sultana come to mind as some of the field’s most forward thinkers – but people are looking for something new from musicians, and what Maher does is about as futuristic as anything happening in music right now. Him and his music are meeting the moment. People have shaken off the cobwebs of the pandemic, they want to move, they want to be wowed and while Maher has a body of recorded work going back twenty years, he really is someone you have to experience live to be touched by the magic, the life, that his music exudes.

Maher is just that, a lifer. He was a long-time staple of the Vancouver music scene, starting an Open Mic night that hosted early performances from Mother Mother, Ashleigh Ball and JUNK, as well as being a member of early 00s Vancouver jammers Flannel Jimmy. In July of 2021, he hit No. 31 on the Billboard Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart as a featured artist on Vandelux’s “Matter of Time”, which has over 83 million plays on Spotify. His latest solo single, “Red Planet”, evokes peak-Justin Timberlake, an upbeat R&B paean to a partner, that lifts off during its falsetto chorus and flies even higher during its wailing, closing saxophone solo. The title track from his 2020 EP Dream Final sounds like a City and Colour song that you could play in the club. With his original compositions, Maher creates a real venn diagram of modern pop sounds – R&B, electronic, jazz and hip-hop – but lyrically, they feature the kind of singer-songwriter earnestness you don’t always find in those genres. 

That may be because for Maher, music is life. He has been through a lot during his time as a musician, bouncing back from a harrowing battle with addiction, to come into this moment of renewed passion and drive and purpose. He recently toured North America opening for and playing with Winnipeg psychedelic jazz rock collective Apollo Suns and EDM bootstompers Moontricks. He also became a father in 2023, taking his family on the road with him for a spell, rising to the occasion of parenthood, and showing no signs of slowing down artistically. In fact, it seems like he may just be getting started.