Newsletter no. 29
Newsletter no. 29
Analysis, Creation, and Teaching of Orchestration Project
TOR Spotlight
Icicle
Written by McGill PhD Student and ACTOR student member Kelsey Lussier, our newest instalment in the "Amazing Moments in Timbre" series features Robert Aitken's Icicle (1977), investigating how the composer uses specific performance techniques to produce timbres that evoke sensations of coldness and winter. The perfect antidote to those sweltering summer days that are already upon us! Read more
Creations & Productions
CORE Project – 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 is available for streaming soon at the following link https://music-cms.ucsd.edu/concerts/live.html.
Click the image to load the open the video in a new tab.
The Great Gig in the Sky
Jay Marchand Knight, as NeeNee Knightly, recorded The Great Gig in the Sky by Pink Floyd for a 50th anniversary reimagining of Dark Side of the Moon. The album, called The Dark Side of Venus, is on the Indie Rootz label. A portion of the money made from album sales goes to ovarian cancer research. Jay (NeeNee Knightly) will be joining the Indie Rootz label as a ska artist in residence. Read more
Publications
New publications involving ACTOR members have been made available:
Nestorova, T., Brandner, M., Gingras, B., Herbst, C.T. (in press). (2023). Vocal vibrato characteristics in historical and contemporary opera, operetta, and Schlager. Journal of Voice. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvoice.2022.12.027
Marchand Knight J., Sares, A.G. and Deroche, M.L.D. (2023). Visual biases in evaluation of speakers’ and singers’ voice type by cis and trans listeners. Front. Psychol. 14:1046672. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1046672
For the full bibliography, please visit ACTOR publications.
Presentations
Doctoral Presentation - Darko Dimitrijevic
photo by Simon Laroche
ACTOR student member Darko Dimitrijevic presented his doctoral project update in the frame of Vivier InterUniversitaire, an inter-institutional initiative based in Montreal supported by Group Le Vivier devoted to the dissemination of research by student researchers, and creative practitioners with a focus on new music. The event took place on June 2 at 1pm in room A-832 of the Elisabeth Wirth Music Building of the Schulich School of Music of McGill University.
Darko's presentation included performance analyses of the pieces presented through the ACTOR project's third round of the CORE/EROC seminar given at UdeM by Profs Caroline Traube, Jimmie LeBlanc and Jean-Michaël Lavoie.
This event took place in a hybrid format and was broadcast live. Read more
Resources
New MaxMSP, PureData, and VST object deployed
The Artificial Creative Intelligence and Data Science (ACIDS) group led by ACTOR member Philippe Esling has deployed new MaxMSP, PureData and VST objects. Everything is available as open source at GitHub: https://github.com/acids-ircam
The ACIDS group is part of the Music Representations Team (RepMus) team at the IRCAM-STMS laboratory and aims to model musical creativity by developing innovative artificial intelligence models.
ACTOR Wrokshop
Y5 Workshop Registration - 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.
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.
Website Update
ACTOR on Zenodo
ACTOR's TOR publications now have a home on Zenodo! Zenodo is one of the world's largest open-access research repositories, providing a secure digital home for ACTOR-generated research. As of now, all TOR publications (excluding the Timbre Lingo series) have been uploaded as PDF documents, and each publication now has a DOI. Future TOR submissions, if accepted, will be uploaded to Zenodo once the author formats the submission with ACTOR's Zenodo template (available soon!).
Check out the ACTOR Zenodo Community here https://zenodo.org/communities/actor-tor and email benjamin.duinker@mail.mcgill.ca if you have any questions.
Elections
ACTOR 2023 Student Representative Elections
Dear ACTOR Student Members,
It is time to elect new student representatives for ACTOR's committees! As you are probably know, we are circulating a ballot for the election of the new Student Rep of the Executive Committee and the Knowledge Mobilization Committee (KMC).
The election goes until June 21 and is being organized through a website called eBallot. You most likely received an email from eBallot with the link to vote. This is not a spam! This email contains your access code which you will need to log in. It’s a unique identifier that ensures people will only vote once. Please check if this email is not in your junk mailbox. If you haven't received this or are having technical difficulties, please contact Andre at actor-project.music@mcgill.ca.
This process is totally anonymous and it should take only a couple of minutes of your time. We would really appreciate your participation!
ACTOR's Governance
Restructuring of committees
We would like to inform all ACTOR members that the Executive Committee has approved a proposal for the restructuring of the KMC and TMC according to which the ACTOR postdoctoral fellow and the Student Representative in each committee would be made co-chairs, thus leading to a triple governance (i.e., chair (collaborator), co-chair (postdoc), and co-chair (Student Representative). This change is permanent and is in effect as of Wednesday, May 17. Not only will this change bring symmetry between committees, but we believe it will also help create clearer expectations regarding balance of workload.
Kelsey Lussier
Kelsey Lussier is a PhD student in music theory working towards her candidacy at McGill University in Montreal. Originally from Calgary, Alberta, she completed her Bachelor of Music degree at Queen’s University in flute performance. She then went on to complete her Master of Arts in Music Theory degree at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC, where she wrote her thesis on augmented sixth chords in Tchaikovsky’s orchestral music.
Kelsey’s current research interests explore intersections of timbre, texture, and orchestration with groove. One of her most recent projects explores these intersections to create a new model of texture in hip hop music. She has also presented work that examines moments and procedures of transition between grooves in pop tracks of a variety of styles, examining how orchestration and texture facilitate these transitions and affect apparent ease of entrainment to a given metrical structure. Kelsey is also continuing her research on chromatic harmony by bringing together methods of analyzing timbre and orchestration with those that unpack harmonic function and voice leading, aiming to show the role that orchestration plays in perceived harmonic function and syntax.
Photo credits: Heather Lussier
Jason Winikoff
Jason Winikoff is a Ph.D. candidate in ethnomusicology at the University of British Columbia. He is a scholar of timbre, Luvale culture, the drumset, Zambian percussion, jazz, and musical field research. His work has been published in Ethnomusicology and he has presented research at numerous conferences around the globe including SEM, SMT, AAWM, Timbre 2018, and Future Directions in Music Cognition. Upcoming presentations about timbre and orchestration include the ACTOR Y5 Workshop, Timbre 2023 conference, and 2023 SEM annual meeting. He is also a recent recipient of the the ACTOR Collaborative Student Project Grant with Lena Heng. Winikoff received his M.A. in ethnomusicology from Tufts University and his B.F.A. in jazz studies from Tulane University. He co-founded the ACTOR Project's Sub-Saharan African & Afro-Diasporic subgroup of the Diversity workgroup with Jay Marchand Knight and Joshua Rosner and spearheaded the Afrological Perspectives on Timbre & Orchestration speaker series. Outside of academia, Winikoff is working drummer and percussionist in the Vancouver jazz scene.
Winikoff is currently writing his doctoral dissertation tentatively titled "The Music of the Masks: Zambian Luvale Percussion, Makishi Performance, and Timbral Aesthetics." The study investigates the cultural ramifications of timbre and orchestration within the setting of a traditional African masquerade theatre. His work engages with multiple lines of timbre research including semantics, stream segregation, the Timbre Toolbox, spectrograms, and orchestration analysis. Winikoff frequently blurs the lines between disciplines, utilizing methodologies from ethnomusicology, music theory, historical musicology, and music cognition. Extensive field research and practical performance skills underline his ethnographically informed analyses. With this model, he hopes to give timbre studies a window into the cultural components of orchestration.
Photo credit: Vincent Lim
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.
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.
