Newsletter no. 15
Analysis, Creation, and Teaching of Orchestration Project
February, 2022
Note from the Editor
2022 is shaping up to be another promising year for ACTOR! As always, we're looking forward to sharing our members' accomplishments, including awards, publications, and project updates. You'll notice that Kit Soden, our webmaster, and the website team have been particularly busy—the newsletter highlights lots of new features and content on the ACTOR website. We encourage you to explore the latest updates online!
— Lindsey Reymore, Newsletter Editor and ACTOR Postdoc
Musician Auditory Perception (MAP) Project Report
An interactive project report has been published by the Musician’s Auditory Perception (MAP) team: Shahrokh Yadegari (University of California, San Diego) [PI] with ACTOR collaborator Jeanne Côté (McGill University), and student members Pedram Diba (McGill University), Min Seok Peter Ko (UCSD), Sang Song (UCSD), Berk Schneider (UCSD), and Tiange Zhou (UCSD) plus external collaborator Florian Grond (McGill University).
The purpose of the MAP project is to collect qualitative data via sonic ethnography in order to promote and analyze, both literally and metaphorically, (a) sonic collaboration between auditory learners, (b) modes of sound information gathering, and (c) the creative expression of musicians, while disrupting common pedagogic methods that reinforce hierarchical education practices. Read more
Timbre and Orchestration Writings: Dialogues
"Dialogues" is a new peer-reviewed series on the Timbre and Orchestration Resource. We are happy to announce that the first article, Musical Collaborations, Timbre, and Recorded Sound, has just been published by University of Montreal Ph.D. candidate Viktor Lazarov and McGill Professor Martha de Francisco. The interview focuses on de Francisco's experience recording great pianists:
"The piano sound that we hear on a recording is a combination of the pianist’s performance, the characteristic sounds of the instrument, and the context of the space where it is recorded, to which the pianist is constantly reacting. The recording philosophy that is applied is an additional factor that contributes to the overall impression."
Amazing Moments in Timbre
Over the next few weeks, the Timbre and Orchestration Resource will feature new “Amazing Moments in Timbre” contributions from several invited graduate student authors from a Fall 2021 University of Oregon seminar on timbre (taught by ACTOR member Zachary Wallmark). Contributions tackle a diverse range of repertories and analytical perspectives, including modernist bassoon playing, a forest of speakers, Christina Aguilera, and the soundtrack to the TV show Hannibal.
Check out the first new essay: Subwhistle
Timbre Stories
"Timbre Stories" is a new blog series that features writings by members reflecting on timbre and its impact on their studies, research, and creative endeavours. New posts by Stephen McAdams and Martha de Francisco can be found here:
Contact Kit Soden, the TOR editor, to submit your Timbre Stories.
CREATIONS AND PRODUCTIONS
Recording of an album for guitar and electronics in 3D audio, with a 3D video
Composer Jason Noble and guitarist Steven Cowan recorded three original pieces for guitar and electronics in McGill University’s Multi-Media Room (MMR) during a session last November. The pieces incorporate recordings of speech captured in interviews with residents of their home province of Newfoundland, Canada, as part of a larger project researching dialectal variation as a source for musical creation. The recordings will be released on an album next year, funded by an ACTOR Research-Creation grant. The final piece on this album, to be composed early next year, will feature an empirically validated system of analogies between guitar timbres and spoken vowels, drawing on the acoustical research of Caroline Traube as well as results of a forthcoming perceptual experiment. The pieces also draw on narrative elements from the interviews, with themes including folklore (especially ghost and fairy stories that are popular in Newfoundland), the battle of Beaumont Hamel, technological change, and the role of dialects in establishing regional identities. 3D audio recording and spatialization were created by audio engineer Carolina Rodriguez Escobar and recording assistant Ying-Ying Zhang.
Soundpear
Soundpear is a spin-off enterprise based on Asteris Zacharakis' research on timbre. The project went public in December 2021. In addition to utilizing existing research on timbre semantics, it also aims to expand towards less explored areas of multimodal perception between audition and gustation/olfaction.
"Prelude" by Jorge Ramos
Jorge Ramos' composition for electronics, titled Prelude, was premiered on January 14 at GnRATION (online) from Braga, Portugal. Jorge's compositions have recently been selected for several festivals, including the National Showcase of Young Creators 2022 (Portugal) and the Festival Ecos Urbanos 2021 (Mexico).
"gone - alone" by Hans Tutschku
On December 11, 2021, 'gone - alone,' a piece by Hans Tutschku for violin and 8-channel electronics, was premiered by Gabby Diaz in John Knowles Paine Hall, Harvard University. The composition is a tribute in memory of those who left us too early. The electronics are combining live audio processing of the violin, as well as an electronic orchestration of a virtual chamber ensemble.
PUBLICATIONS
New publications involving ACTOR members have been made available:
Pustijanac, I. (2020). "La metafora del suono come être vivant e il suo ruolo nelle poetiche compositive contemporanee [The Metaphor of Sound as être vivant and Its Role in Contemporary Compositional Poetics]," in S. Caputo and C. Felici (Eds.), Out of Nature: Music, Natural Sound Sources and Acoustic Ecology. Chigiana, Journal of Musicological Studies, 50, 217—238.
Féron, F.X. (2021). "Spectra as Theoretical and Practical Models in Gérard Grisey’s Creative Process," in A. Bauer, L. Cagney & W. Mason (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Spectral Music, Oxford University Press.
For the full bibliography, please visit ACTOR publications.
PRESENTATIONS
Explaining sound concepts' shared and specific representations
Victor Rosi presented the project "Explaining sound concepts' shared and specific representations" at IRCAM on January 12. This timbre semantics study assessed brightness, warmth, roundness, and roughness, investigating the shared and specific aspects of each concept. The presentation, which is in English, can be viewed HERE
Two more ACTOR members appointed Canada Research Chairs
Congratulations to our collaborators Ichiro Fujinaga, appointed as Canada Research Chair in Music Information Retrieval and Ana Sokolovic, appointed as Canada Research Chair in Opera Creation. We are proud to have such brilliant scholars among the ACTOR community.
photo of Prof. Sokolovic by: André Parmentier
ACTOR Associate Director appointed acting Director of CIRMMT
Congratulations to ACTOR Associate Director, Robert Hasegawa, on his new role as acting Director of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT) for the first half of 2022. Hasegawa has been been an invaluable member of ACTOR, leading the Diversity working group and several research projects, and we look forward to his leadership in this new position.
Ways of Returning
23 February | 7:30pm EST
Espace Orange | Édifice Wilder
Anthony Tan's Ways of Returning for amplified string quartet and electronics won the Canada Council 2021 Jules Léger Prize for Chamber Music. The work explores timbre through the historical abstraction of modal and tonal counterpoint. The first movement builds timbre through the imitation of acoustic strings by sampled and synthetically modelled strings. The second movement is a timbre fugue. The third movement explores the micro-synchronicity within a pulsation and its effect on timbral blend. Aesthetically, this work represents the mixing of the classical string quartet genre with Noise, and Dark Ambient genre signifiers.
Those in Montreal will be able to hear the work in concert on Feb 23, performed by Quatuor Bozzini in partnership with Le Vivier. Read more
Orchestre Métropolitain: Le pelleteur de nuages
February 26 | 3:00pm (EST)
Maison symphonique de Montréal
The Orchestre Métropolitain will present a symphonic adaptation of Simon Boulerice's children's book Le pelleteur de nuages, a beautiful and immensely poetic tale telling the story of young Elliot, a little boy with an overactive imagination who has vitiligo. The book, illustrated by Josée Bisaillon, addresses themes of difference, diversity, stigma, inclusion and self-esteem. The performance will take place on February 26, 3pm EST, at the Maison symphonique de Montréal. Read more
PROJECT UPDATES
L’orgue à bouche entre Extrême-Orient et Occident. L’invention d’un répertoire contemporain.
François-Xavier Féron and Liao Lin-Ni have been working on a special issue dedicated to Asian mouth organs and entitled L’orgue à bouche entre Extrême-Orient et Occident. L’invention d’un répertoire contemporain. This issue was made possible with the support of ACTOR and involves three ACTOR members: Julie Delisle, Robert Hasegawa, and François-Xavier Féron. It will be published in Circuit – Musiques contemporaines (vol.32 n°1) in Spring 2022.
WEBSITE UPDATES
VIDEOS
We are pleased to announce several new additions to the TOR Video Series:
Abstract Workshop - Training and Mentoring Committee
CIRMMT-ACTOR Symposium on Orchestration Research, November 2019
CIRMMT-ACTOR Symposium on Orchestration Research, February 2020
CIRMMT-ACTOR Symposium on Orchestration Research, November 2021
ACTOR Y2 Workshop student presentations
ACTOR Y3 Workshop student presentations
Conference presentation - Lindsey Reymore and Jacqueline Leclair, Taking it off the page: Interpretation and performance-driven analysis
KMC Webpage
A new page for the Knowledge Mobilization Committee has been made available on our website. It contains the new TOR electronic press kit (EPK), presentation slides about ACTOR, information about the use of logos, and other mechanisms to increase ACTOR's visibility. We hope this will be a useful resource to all members disseminating their ACTOR-related research.
TOR Database
There is now a way to share your research accomplishments with the ACTOR community instantly — the TOR Database. Designed to document all contributions made to TOR and facilitate the exchange of information with all the membership, the database instantly displays all the content submitted via the TOR Form. This doesn't mean that your material will not be properly arranged within the different sections of the TOR — it is simply a more practical way to share and collaborate with your fellow ACTORians. You can actually see your content on our website the moment you send it. Share away!
SSHRC funding approved for second half of ACTOR Project
We are pleased to announce that Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) has completed its Midterm Review of the ACTOR Partnership and has decided to continue funding the project. The decision rests upon the recommendation of a multidisciplinary committee established by SSHRC whose mandate is to assess the progress of teams against their initial goals as outlined in the application and milestone report. With this result in mind, we will be able to proceed confidently with our activities until the completion of the project in 2025. We would like to thank all members involved in ACTOR, without whom we would not have succeeded.
John Rea
Orchestration and re-orchestration have enjoyed for many years a privileged place in John Rea’s research. Since 1986, with an orchestration of Claude Vivier’s Pulau Dewata for 13 instruments (and another version for symphony orchestra), diverse projects both big and small have appeared on his worktable: a re-orchestration (1992-95) for 21 musicians and ten singers of the opera Wozzeck op. 7 by Alban Berg; two separate arrangements (1996; 2001) of his own Alma & Oskar for two voices and orchestra; a re-orchestration (1999) for 34 strings of Alexina Louie’s O Magnum Mysterium – In Memoriam Glenn Gould; an orchestration (2002) of Sieben frühe Lieder by Gustav Mahler, for two voices and 15 instruments; a transcription (2009-10) for six percussionists of Four Etudes by György Ligeti; and a re-orchestration (2013-14) of Drei Orchesterstücke op. 6 by Alban Berg, for 28 musicians.
About a dozen original works for orchestra also materialized on his worktable, to mention four: Les Jours/The Days (1969), Over Time (1987), Time and Again (1987), and Figures hâtives (2005-06), a violin concerto.
Up until 2019 when he retired, John Rea taught composition, music theory, and orchestration at McGill University where he served as Dean of the Faculty of Music (1986-1991), today the Schulich School of Music. He also co-founded two musical societies in Montreal (Les Événements du neuf, and Traditions musicales du monde), and for twenty-five years was a member of the artistic committee of the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec. During the 2015-16 season, the Société in their Homage Series named him composer of the year.
Roger Reynolds
Roger Reynolds is known for his integration of diverse ideas and resources, and for seamlessly blending traditional musical sounds and those now enabled by technology. His work responds to texts both poetic (Beckett, Borges, Ashbery) and mythological (Aeschylus, Euripides, Heraclitus). He is noted for "wizardry in sending music flying through space: whether vocal, instrumental, or computerized." In 1969, Reynolds accepted a tenured appointment to UC San Diego and has helped establish its Music Department as a destination program. Reynolds won early recognition with Fulbright, Guggenheim, and National Institute of Arts and Letters Awards, as well as several grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, and a Fellowship from the Institute for Current World Affairs. In 1989, he won the Pulitzer Prize in Music for the string orchestra composition, Whispers Out of Time. His over 100 compositions are published by Edition Peters, New York; several dozen CDs and DVDs of his music have been commercially released. He is author or four books and numerous articles, some of them the result of collaborations with American, Canadian, and French scientists. Other collaborators have been choreographers Lucinda Childs and Bill T. Jones, as well as theater directors Tadashi Suzuki and Tina Parker. His performer partners have included Irvine Arditti, The Arditti Quartet, Steven Schick, Yuji Takahashi, Alexis Descharmes, Pablo Gómez Cano, Anthony Burr, Eric Hueber, and Jacqueline Leclair. In 2009 Reynolds was appointed University Professor — the first artist to be so honored in the University of California. In 1998, the Library of Congress established a Special Collection of his work. His scores and correspondence are also included in the Paul Sacher Collection in Basel. Reynolds has held guest appointments at Harvard, Yale, Amherst, University of Illinois, and CUNY. As part of the ACTOR project, he has been an active researcher in the Composer-performer Orchestration Research Ensembles (CORE), which aims to explore the research-creation potential of orchestration problem-solving in the relationship between performers and composers.
*photo by Eric Jepsen
Strategic & Research-Creation Project Funding
The deadline for Round 2 of the Strategic and Research-Creation Project Funding 2021-2022 is 5:00pm (EDT) on March 15, 2022. Projects must involve at least two members in different ACTOR institutions.The Principal Investigator for any proposal must be a regular ACTOR member at an ACTOR academic partner institution. Collaborators at non-partner institutions are not eligible as principal investigators for these grants but may be collaborators on the project.
The purpose of the ACTOR Strategic Project Funding is to encourage innovative research and/or pilot projects by members of the ACTOR Partnership whereas the Research-Creation Project Funding aims to provide paid opportunities for students and artists in vulnerable positions due to the COVID-19 crisis. For more information and to access the application forms, visit ACTOR's website.
ACTOR Student Presentations
Student members of ACTOR are eligible to apply for an opportunity to present an ACTOR related project at the yearly ACTOR Workshop. This year's Workshop will be held in a hybrid format (in-person/online) July 9-11 in Calgary, Alberta. The deadline to apply for ACTOR Student Presentations is 5:00pm (EDT) on March 15. For additional information and to access the application form, visit - ACTOR Student Presentations.
Postdoctoral Fellow positions available!
ACTOR is looking for two bright minds to join its team of postdoctoral researchers. Unfortunately, the contracts of current postdocs Lindsey Reymore and Matthew Zeller will end on August 31, at which time they will be passing the baton to new fellow researchers.
The postdoctoral fellows will work primarily on either the Analysis Axis or the Output Innovation Axis. They will be involved in project coordination and research on orchestration in the fields of music theory, musicology, orchestration pedagogy, and compositional practice. They will participate in the development of methods for evaluating the impact of this research in those domains and will co-supervise graduate and undergraduate students.
Applicants must have received their doctorate (PhD, DMA, DMus) within 3 years of the starting date of the fellowship. They should submit a cover letter, CV, and 3 representative papers (or 2 papers and a composition for the Output Innovation Axis PDF), and arrange for 3 letters of reference to be sent to actor-project.music@mcgill.ca. Applications will be reviewed as of April 15, 2022 until the position is filled. The ideal start date is August 1, 2022 to provide overlap with the incumbent PDFs, but September 1, 2022 is the latest start date.
For the complete details, visit Postdoctoral Fellow Positions
Contributing to TOR
We encourage all ACTOR members to share their research (in progress or completed) with the ACTOR community via the Timbre and Orchestration Resource (TOR). This may include an article, blog, or video submission containing information on project ideas, experiments, external resources/tools, teaching materials, analysis, or anything related to timbre and orchestration that you deem relevant. We believe that only in doing so will we truly benefit from the expertise and feedback from the world-class team of scientists, artists, and humanists involved in ACTOR. If you have any questions about the submission process, please contact Kit Soden. Read more
