wasteLAnd
On May 21, in the Experimental Theater of the Conrad Prebys Music Center in La Jolla, California, The Los Angeles based wasteLAnd ensemble premiered six new works for instruments and electronics by Matthew Henson, Roger Reynolds, Jonny Stallings, Rand Steiger, Alex Taylor and Ni Zheng as part of UCSD's participation in the ACTOR Composer-performer Orchestration Research Ensembles (CORE) project.
wasteLAnd was founded by, and includes many alumni of the UCSD program including Rachel Beetz, Nicholas Deyoe, Dustin Donahue, Todd Mollenberg, and Ashley Walters.
wasteLAnd performs New Works for Ensemble and Electronics
Program:
Rand Steiger: Liminalities
Alex Taylor: Adjustments
Jonny Stallings: Cañonazo 3
Matthew Henson: Armature
Roger Reynolds: Co-Existence
Ni Zheng: pleasure of refusal
Performers:
wasteLAnd
Nicholas Deyoe, conductor
Rachel Beetz, flute
Brian Walsh, bass clarinet
Mattie Barbier, trombone
Dustin Donahue, percussion
Todd Moellenberg, piano
Adrianne Pope, violin
Ashley Walters, cello
The concert was live-streamed and will be available for streaming soon at the following link https://music-cms.ucsd.edu/concerts/live.html.
Musical Collaborations, Timbre, and Recorded Sound
In-depth: a post or two about Maestro Brendel's comments:
“– One should hear the particular sound of the pianist, the timbres and balances that are recognizably his or her own. When I listen to some old recording of Cortot (Chopin 24 Preludes 1933), Edwin Fischer’s Well-Tempered Clavier or Kempff’s Decca recordings from 1950 I get this impression. They remind me of their sound which was such an essential quality and which I witnessed in many concerts. The other features: rhythm, tempo, articulation, cohesion, are easier to transmit.
– Do modern recordings have greater clarity? There is, on old recordings, often less reverberation, and yet they have a warmer sound. And there are recordings like my second set of Beethoven Sonatas where, alas, too much reverberation has been added by the sound engineer (it wasn’t Prof. de Francisco!).
– I have, in my later years, generally insisted on pianos that were not excessively bright except for the “big” concertos. Only once in my life, I used two different pianos in one concert. The somewhat unusual programme in London consisted of the Concertos Bartok I and Schoenberg, with Haydn sonatas in between.”
— Comments on the dialogues by Alfred Brendel (January 2022)
https://www.actorproject.org/tor/dialogues/musical-collaborations-timbre-and-recorded-sound/part-one
Nestrova Publication
Check out ACTOR member Theodora Nestorova’s publication in the Journal of Voice, “Vocal Vibrato Characteristics in Historical and Contemporary Opera, Operetta, and Schlager” Click the link to explore Nestorova’s analysis!https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvoice.2022.12.027
Newsletter / Bulletin #29
Facebook/ Instagram: ACTOR'S June newsletter is now out! Subscribe to our newsletter to keep up with all of ACTOR'S research, projects and upcoming events about TOR.
Workshop Deadline Extension
We invite all members interested in attending the Y5 workshop, online or in person, to register via the link below. The deadline has been extended until June 11. Register with the link in bio!
Registration
More details about the workshop are available at ACTOR Y5 Workshop.
Not a member yet? Visit our General Information page and learn how to apply for membership in time for the workshop.
SEAMUS
ACTOR Student members Jeanne Côté (violin) and Pedram Diba (composer) participated in the 2023 Conference of the Society for Electroacoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS). They performed As Close as Breath, a work composed for the research-creation project Musician's Auditory Perception (https://timbreandorchestration.org/writings/project-reports/musicians-auditory-perception).
The concert took place on April 8 in Cary Hall at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music in New York City.
Shared mental representations underlie metaphorical sound concepts.
Read “Shared mental representations underlie metaphorical sound concepts,” an article published in Scientific Reports with contributions by ACTOR members Victor Rossi and Patrick Susini.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-32214-2
Timbre and Orchestration from a Performer/Improviser's Perspective Magda Mayas
ACTOR Collaborator Magda Mayas, lecturer in improvisation at the Lucerne School of Music.
Y5 Workshop Registrations
REGISTRATION
We would like to invite all members to register for the Y5 Workshop. Registration is free and can be done via the following link: https://forms.office.com/r/nH9x3chXzv
Those who have already responded to the survey recently circulated will have a chance to update their responses, confirming their participation.
Members whose travel is being funded by ACTOR, such as Institutional Representatives, don't need to register.
To learn more about the workshop, see the link below: https://www.actorproject.org/workshops/y5/homepage
Publication: Zachary Wallmark's Video for "What is timbre ?"
Do you know what timbre is? Click the link or watch the video down below to hear Zachary Wallmark, Assistant Professor of Musicology at the University of Oregon, "break down the layers of timbre and what draws listeners to a particular sound.” Let us know what you think in the comments!
Afrological Perspective Speakers on Youtube
Video recordings of past presentations of the Afrological Perspectives on Timbre & Orchestration Speaker Series are now available on YouTube and the ACTOR website! Click the link in bio to watch speakers Dr. Bibian Kalinde, Dr. Stephanie Shonekan, kevin C. Holt, Marvin McNeill, Andile Khumalo, and Joel LaRue Smith.
Collaborative Student Project Grant Recipients
Congratulations to the student members whose projects have been selected for funding through the Collaborative Student Project Grant:
Jason Winikoff (University of British Columbia) & Lena Heng (McGill University): Ulezo: Mapping Acoustic Properties to Timbre Descriptors in Zambian Luvale Drum Tuning
Martin Daigle (McGill University) & Pauline Patie (Université de Montréal): Real-time Timbral Analysis for Musical and Visual Augmentation
Jeremy Tatar (McGill University) & Victor Burton (Universität der Künste Berlin): Timbral, Textural, and Rhythmic Stratification in Footwork Percussion
Newsletter / Bulletin #28
Album Release
Congrats to percussionist and ACTOR Student member Martin Daigle on the release of his album DRUM MACHINES on April 14, 2023!
This album features extended techniques inspired by the instrumental explorations developped in Masque de Fer, an ACTOR Collaborative Student Project by Daigle (McGill University) and Gabriel Couturier (Université de Montréal).
Martin's second album is full-length, and it features innovative drumkit music. Along with the release of the stereo format version, a 3D binaural audio will be released to provide an immersive experience to the listeners. The entire performance was filmed, and the filmed performance will be released on Martin's YouTube page on the day of release.
Concert du séminaire
Dans le cadre du séminaire « Composer, interpréter et analyser l’orchestration contemporaine » donné par les collaborateurs du projet ACTOR Jean-Michaël Lavoie, Jimmie LeBlanc et Caroline Traube, en collaboration avec Pierre Michaud, cinq ensembles ont été formés et des oeuvres sont composées avec l'aide et la contribution créative des interprètes de chacun des ensembles. Ce concert présentera la création de deux oeuvres mixtes pour septuor et électronique, de Simon Grégorcic et Hans Martin, étudiants au doctorat à l’Université de Montréal, dans le cadre des activités de l'Ensemble de recherche en orchestration contemporaine — EROC 3 (2022-2023).
*Entrée gratuite
Jay Marchand Knight’s Multimedia Production
On 3 April 2023, ACTOR collaborator Jay Marchand Knight presented a multimedia installation as part of Concordia University's INDI Research Day. The installation, entitled "Where Can We Sing?", is a creative representation of Jay's research on voice timbre and gender perception; equity, diversity, and inclusion issues in vocal performance; and the German Fach System. The work was supported by Eldad Tsabary and RISE Opera, of which Jay is an active member, and included text by Jay and their supervisor, Mickael Deroche. INDI Research Day selected the creative work of 10 students to be featured in the event. Where Can We Sing? was granted the first prize. The jury consisted of three faculty members from science, visual arts, and humanities.
Newsletter / Bulletin #27
EduFilm 1 et 2 maintenant en Francais
Les EduFilms d'ACTOR sont désormais disponibles en français sur la chaîne Youtube ACTOR! Cliquez sur le lien dans la bio pour les regarder. / The ACTOR EduFilms are available in French on the ACTOR Youtube Channel!
https://youtu.be/RwiI6mKKMX0 (Film 1)
https://youtu.be/bQPzUqykkio (Film 2)
Timbre and Orchestration Writings: Technology and Timbre
Revisiting Jorge Ramos’ autoethnography on the influence of electronics on the composer’s orchestration practice! Ramos’ article, Technology and Timbre, explores "the relationship between instrumental orchestration and electronics primarily through the means of spectral analysis and subsequent electronic-informed timbre-blending techniques such as filtering, reverberation, granular synthesis, pitch freezing, envelope generators, noise, delays and spatialization.
FluCoMa Workshop
The Fluid Corpus Manipulation (FluCoMa) Workshop will take place on April 14 from 10am-5pm at McGill University (room A-832) in collaboration with CIRMMT, the ACTOR project and composer Pierre Alexandre Tremblay.
This workshop will bring together creative practitioners who currently work with FluCoMa and will provide a constructive and collegial environment to present ongoing projects, exchange ideas and learn about different approaches and uses of the FluCoMa library. Presentations in English and French will be featured, and the workshop is intended for advanced users.
If you are interested in participating in the workshop, please send an email to andres.gutierrezmartinez@mcgill.ca stating your interest in participating before April 1. To learn more about FluCoMa and the workshop, see the link in bio!