Newsletter no. 16

Written By ACTOR Research Team

Analysis, Creation, and Teaching of Orchestration Project

Editor’s Note:

March looks to be an exciting month for ACTOR! We are happy to report several upcoming concerts and presentations this month. Members, make sure to read through the open calls—there are a number of deadlines approaching for funding and in preparation for the Year 4 Workshop. This includes student opportunities for workshop presentations, exchange program funding, and the Collaborative Student Project Grant (which we are pleased to announce has been renewed)!

-Lindsey Reymore, newsletter editor and ACTOR postdoc

 

 

TOR Spotlight

Amazing Moments in Timbre

We are pleased to share the news that four new "Amazing Moments in Timbre" essays have been published on the Timbre and Orchestration Resource:

CREATIONS AND PRODUCTIONS

"BLUR" by Jorge Ramos

The online premiere of Jorge Ramos's piece BLUR, commissioned by UNESCO, was live-streamed on February 9th. The project asked Ramos and 12 other artists to "imagine a fairer, more sustainable future, and to consider how we can use our technologies to help us learn to play again." The performance can be viewed on the Media Arts Cities website.

 

 

Concert - Ensemble Carin

On March 12, 11:00am, Guillaume Bourgogne conducted the Ensemble Cairn in the concert TREMPLIN DE LA CRÉATION. The program included new works by Katarina Gryvul, Manuel Hidalgo Navas, Maylis Raynal, Nicolas Brochec, Ana Meunier, Senay Ugurlu and Quentin Lauvray.

 

 

Concert & Doctoral Recital

Two concerts at Université de Montréal have featured ACTOR student members. Both concerts were conducted by Hooshyar Khayam, whose supervisors include Jean-François Rivest and Ana Sokolovic. The first concert, on March 12 at 7:30 pm, included the premiere of two new symphonic works by composers Simon Gregorcic and Romain Camiolo. Gregorcic, a PhD student at the University of Montreal, is co-supervised by Caroline Traube and Jimmie Leblanc. Khayam has also presented a doctoral recital on March 14 at 7:30 pm, including Stravinsky’s Histoire du soldat and Konzert, Op.24 by Webern. Both concerts were held in the Salle Claude Champagne at the Université de Montréal.

PUBLICATIONS

New publications involving ACTOR members have been made available:

  • Bernard, A., Jolly, G., Lerichomme, L., & Michel, P. (Eds.). (2021). Gestes, Performances, Représentations. Université de Strasbourg Press.

  • Dubois, D., Cance, C., Coler, M., Paté, A. & Guastavino, C. (Eds.). (2021). Sensory Experiences: Exploring meaning and the senses. Benjamins, Amsterdam, NL.

PRESENTATIONS

Analyzing Timbre

Nathalie Hérold is presenting a Master Seminar titled "Analyser le timbre" at the Sorbonne Université. The seminar, which was conceived in close relation with ACTOR, began in January and will run through April. This seminar aims to consider and implement different methods and tools—including computer tools—allowing the integration of timbre in an analytical and theoretical approach.

Watershed Festival

Jason Noble and J. Marchand Knight have received grants from The Watershed Festival: Reimagining Music Theatre. The event will take place 24–29 May 2022 in Kingston, Canada but will also be livestreamed. Jason's piece will feature fellow ACTORians, J. Marchand Knight (voice), Lindsey Reymore (oboe/English horn), and Julie Delisle (flutes) and will timbrally depict parenting with panic disorder. The libretto is based on a large scale research-creation project, 'What Mommy Needs,' by BA Markus, about the challenges of parenting in isolation. Choreographer Bettina Szabo will direct the video.

An excerpt of J.'s piece, "Cleopatra Built," will be previewed during Watershed as well. The opera has been commissioned by the genderbending company, Opéra Queens, for a Cleopatra themed series and will be presented along with the Berlioz and Handel versions in 2023. On a text by EE Cummings, it explores the relationship between Cleopatra (voiced by two separate characters who merge into one: Egypt and The Nile), her sister Arsinoë, and her lady in waiting, Charmian. For more information, please visit The Watershed website: https://www.watershedmusictheatre.com/

Timbre Geeks Networking Meet & Greet

March 21 | 10:00am
Online

We would like to invite all ACTOR student members to join us for the Timbre Geeks Networking (TGN) Meet & Greet on Monday, March 21st at 10:00am (EDT) via Zoom. The event will be dedicated to help people with similar research interests connect and form collaborations. TGN’s main goal is to enable students to develop collaborative projects and apply for the Collaborative Student Project Grant.

We suggest that each student participating prepare an elevator-pitch version of their current research activities/interests/ideas so that we can get to know each other's work and find potential collaborators. You can also start learning about other ACTOR members’ research on the ACTOR Internal Directory.

If you wish to start connecting NOW, please join the ACTOR community on Slack! We have created a channel specifically for student members (actor-student_members) to facilitate communication and the exchange of ideas. If you are not part of it, let us know and we’ll add you ASAP.

 

 

Why do we Dream

March 17 | 8:00pm (EDT)
10-760 Concordia EV Building

On March 17 at 8pm, ACTOR member J. Marchand Knight will premiere the role of 'Maître D' of Lucid Dreams' in an experimental piece, "Why do we Dream?" with RISE Opera. Concieved by Valentina Plata and directed by Eldad Tsabary, the piece will feature the Concordia Laptop Orchestra (CLOrk), members of the RISE team, invited musical guests, dancers and aerial artists. The interactive, spatialized, "comprovised" installation will take place in 10-760, Concordia EV Building (1515 St. Catherine Street W.) in Montreal, with a YouTube launch to follow (date TBA). The concert is free of charge; proof of vaccination may be required to access certain spaces. Read more

 

 

ACTOR member Guillaume Bourgogne will be conducting two upcoming concerts in France and Montréal:

Ensemble Op. Cit/Ensemble de la SMCQ

March 21 | 7:30pm
Le Sucre
March 27 | 3:00pm (EDT)
Salle Pierre Mercure (Montréal)

Concert - Ensemble Op.Cit - Le Sucre (Lyon, France)
March 21, 7:30 pm - BOUGÉ · TREMBLÉ
New works by Eve Risser and Guilhem Meier

Concert - Ensemble de la SMCQ - Salle Pierre Mercure (Montréal)
March 27, 3:00 pm - LA MÉMOIRE ÉQUIVOQUE - Portrait de Jean Lesage
Concert monographique Jean Lesage

 

 

IV ACTOR-CIRMMT Symposium on Orchestration Research

March 30 | 4:30-6:30pm (EDT)
Online (Zoom)

The event is open to all and will include four student presentations followed by a discussion period.

  • Explaining mental representations of sound semantics – Victor Rosi (IRCAM)

  • Musicians Auditory Perception (MAP) Project – Shahrokh Yadegari (University of California, San Diego) Jeanne Côté (McGill University), Pedram Diba (McGill University), Min Seok Peter Ko (UCSD), Sang Song (UCSD), Berk Schneider (UCSD), Tiange Zhou (UCSD), and Florian Grond (McGill University)

  • Masque de Fer – Martin Daigle (McGill University), and Gabriel Couturier (Université de Montréal)

  • Sounding the interaction of cultures: Orchestration techniques and perceptual effects – Lena Heng (McGill University), and Mengqi Wang (Université de Strasbourg)

To participate online, use the following information:
Join Zoom Meeting
Meeting ID: 876 5069 6542
Passcode: 891120

 

 

Music Encoding Initiative Conference

May 20-22
Halifax, NS

ACTOR members and associates working on the Timbre in Popular Song (TiPS) project, funded by a Strategic Project grant, will present a poster about their newly created corpus and encoding methodology at the Music Encoding Initiative Conference in Halifax, NS, May 20–22, 2022. The paper is titled, "Encoding and Analyzing a New Corpus of Popular Songs;" authors include ACTOR members Lindsey Reymore, Matthew Zeller, Leigh VanHandel, Ben Duinker, Jeremy Tatar, Jade Roth, Nicole Biamonte, and external collaborators Nicholas Shea and Christopher William White.

WEBSITE UPDATES

New ACTOR homepage

Have you been to ACTOR's website lately? You might notice that things are a little different. Instead of the usual ACTOR-centric homepage, we now have a landing page based on the Timbre and Orchestration Resource (TOR)—a key output of the ACTOR project. Although ACTOR will end in 2026, our aim is for the TOR to live on as an ever growing pool of information, pedagogical materials, tools, and resources for the analysis, creation, and teaching of timbre and orchestration. This is reflected in the new architecture of our website, and we encourage our members to contribute to this expanding pool of resources. Check it out - ACTOR Project

 

 

Y4 Workshop

Hotel booking

You can now book your hotel room to participate in the Y4 ACTOR Workshop! Until May 9, you can benefit from special rates at the University of Calgary Accommodations and Events hotel (former Alma Hotel), located on the University of Calgary campus, 150m from the Rozsa Centre where most of the workshop will take place July 9-11. Bookings can be done online or by phone until 9 May, 2022. After this date, rates may change and reservations will be contingent on room availability. To verify rates and book your stay, check the Reservation Information sheet. Should you have any questions, please contact Andre Oliveira.

 

Anthony Tan

Composer, electronic musician, and improvising pianist Anthony Tan intersects notated instrumental practice with signal processing, synthesized models, sampling, and field recording, resulting in music that explores the identity of sound, and the fluidity of genre. His research interests include timbre theory, micro-timing, composer-performer paradigms, and inclusive pedagogy.

Anthony completed the Meisterklasse (3.Zyklus) from the Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber, Dresden, Germany with Mark Andre and Franz Martin Olbrisch, and obtained his Ph.D. from McGill University under the supervision of John Rea and Stephen McAdams. His dissertation was on the compositional control of spectral fusion as a parameter of timbre functionality and culminated in the orchestral work, Ksana I, commissioned by the Dresden Philhamonie.

Awards include the 2021 Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music, the audience and jury prize from ECM+ Generation 2014, the 2011 Giga-Hertz Förder Prize, and the International Competition for live-electronics of the Hamburg Klangwerktage. Residencies include Expermentalstudio des SWR (Freiburg, Germany), and the Leighton Artist Studios at the Banff Centre (Canada).

Anthony was a fellow of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University (RI’17) and previously served as Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs (USA). He is currently Assistant Professor of Composition at the University of Victoria (Canada).

Asteris Zacharakis

Asteris Zacharakis is a research associate and adjunct lecturer at the School of Music Studies of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTh). In 2013, he received his Ph.D from the Centre for Digital Music at Queen Mary University of London, supervised by Josh Reiss. His thesis investigated the relationship between musical timbre perception and its semantic description. Asteris holds a degree in Electrical & Computer Engineering from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and an MSc in Music and Media Technologies from City, University of London. He also holds a degree in cello performance from the State Conservatory of Thessaloniki.

Asteris is interested in investigating how extramusical meaning emerges from musical timbre and how this may contribute to the formation of the overall musical experience. His past research has suggested that the qualities of luminance, texture, and mass constitute the most salient semantic dimensions of musical timbre. He has also worked on evaluating the creativity of CHAMELEON (a computational melodic harmonization assistant) and the way its use may influence the creativity of human composers. More recently, he has developed a strong interest in the exploration of cross-modal associations between audition and gustation or olfaction. This has resulted in the foundation of Soundpear, a company specialized in creating custom made music to match the sensory profile of wines and other products.

 

Satellite Meeting Funding

The purpose of the Satellite Meeting Funding is to increase ACTOR's visibility at international conferences by supporting the organization of adjunct meetings involving at least 2 ACTOR members. A maximum amount of $300 (CAD) will be provided. Applications will be accepted continuously, but must be submitted at least two months prior to the conference date. For more information on how to apply and to access the online application form, visit ACTOR Funding Opportunities.

 

 

Student Exchange

The Student Exchange Funding aims to support ACTOR student members conducting research within the ACTOR project's mandate at an ACTOR partner institution. A maximum of $2,500 CAD per applicant in support of travel and living expenses will be provided. The minimum length of the exchange is 2 weeks. Exchanges must be between ACTOR partner institutions. Applications may be submitted online by 5:00pm (EDT) on April 15, 2022 for exchange visits from July through December. Please note that before submitting an application it is important to verify the travel restrictions at both the home and host institutions/countries. In order to facilitate the application process and encourage more students to apply, the letters from the home and the host institution will no longer be required. Check Student Exchange Funding for more details.

 

 

Collaborative Student Project Grant

We are pleased to announce that the Collaborative Student Project Grant will henceforth be offered on an annual basis. As with last year, up to four projects will be funded at $8,000 (CAD) each. The grant is for pairs of ACTOR student members (any level) from different ACTOR institutions (at least one applicant must be from an academic partner institution) to work on collaborative projects. The deadline for submission is April 15, 2022. More information here: ACTOR Collaborative Student Project Grant.

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, psychology, 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

 

 

Call for activities - Y4 Workshop

With the Y4 workshop ahead, we would like to invite all ACTOR collaborators to submit either or both of the following to Andre by April 15:

  1. Proposals for lightning talks on ACTOR Strategic and Research-Creation Projects. Proposals should include a title and 3-4 sentences about the project. These will be selected by the Executive Committee based on various criteria such as their relevance to ACTOR, number of members involved, number of ACTOR partner institutions represented, interdisciplinarity, and originality of the project. Lightning talks on other ACTOR-related projects might also be considered, depending on the number of proposals submitted.

  2. Suggestions for new, perennial workgroups. Please send a brief description of a suggested topic that could generate open research questions around which you would like to gather a group for lively discussion and the planning of concrete goals for the next year, including a list of potential participants.

For more information, please see - Call for activities - Y4 Workshop

 

 

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

 
 
ACTOR Research Team