Newsletter no. 39
EN | FR
Newsletter no. 39
Analysis, Creation, and Teaching of Orchestration Project
June, 2024
TOR Spotlight:
Studies in Orchestration Practice
The editors of the Timbre and Orchestration Resource are pleased to announce the publication on our website of the the first chapter of the "Studies in Orchestration Practice" by Victor Cordero, Balance and contrast in the succession of orchestral scenes. The publication is part of a new series of monographs exploring theoretical and practical aspects of orchestration. This text inaugurates a long-term project with a modular format enabling key themes to be explored in detail.
In this chapter, Victor, professor of orchestration at Switzerland's Haute école de musique de Genève/Neuchatel, extends the notions of balance and successive contrast in orchestration, analyzing the multiple parameters at play beyond mere intensity. Illustrated by numerous examples from the repertoire, this in-depth text offers a thorough understanding of the techniques involved in making successful orchestral changes.
A must for mastering the art of orchestration! Enjoy your reading at https://timbreandorchestration.org/fr/traites/cahiers-d-orchestration/equilibre-et-le-contraste
The English translation is currently in progress. If you would like to volunteer as a proofreader, please contact Andre Oliveira (actor-project.music@mcgill.ca).
On Timbre, Style, and Imagination
Dialogues, with Kent Nagano
In this new Dialogues entry, from an interview in early 2020, Kent Nagano, then Artistic Director of the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal (OSM), shared his thoughts on the essential role of timbre in music, the power of imagination in interpreting scores, and the art of communicating musical ideas to the orchestra. Read more
photo credit www.kentnagano.com
On Shaping Sound and Expressivity
Dialogues, with Tianyi Lu
In this Dialogues entry, Tianyi Lu shares her approach to conducting and the role of timbre and orchestration in evoking emotions and immersing audiences in the musical experience, offering a unique perspective on the art of conducting. Read more
photo by Marco Borggreve
Creations & Productions
Wind Concerti - Roger Reynolds
Mathias Reumert’s newly created contemporary music label Ekkozone from Denmark has recently released Wind Concertos, an album with two major compositions by Roger Reynolds for soloist and ensemble. This release contains Reynolds's recently composed oboe concerto Journey, which was premiered last year by Jacqueline Leclair, for whom it was written, and Transfigured Wind III, from 1984 for flute soloist, chamber orchestra, and electronics, performed by Swedish flautist Kerstin Thiele as soloist. The album features the Esbjerg ensemble conducted by Mathias Reumert and eight guest musicians including Slovenian master trumpeter, Aleš Klančar, and Swedish pianist extraordinaire, Jonas Olsson.. Read more
Publications
New research involving ACTOR members has been published.
Zhu, L. & McAdams, S. (published online, 06/05/2024) Comparison of perceived and imagined blend of instrumental dyads. Music & Science. https://doi.org/10.1177/20592043241246751. This paper will be part of a special issue emanating from Timbre 2023.
Korsmit, I. R., Montrey, M., Wong-Min, A. T. K., & McAdams, S. (published online, 22/05/2024). The acoustic properties of affective timbres: Consistencies and discrepancies in multiple datasets. Music & Science. https://doi.org/10.1177/20592043241256012. This paper will be part of a special issue emanating from Timbre 2023.
Reuter, S., Saitis, C., Czedik-Eysenberg, I., Siedenburg, K. (2024). Giving Instruments a Voice: Are there vowel-like qualities in the timbres of musical instruments?. In Proceedings DAGA 2024(pp. 1038-1042). German Acoustical Society (DEGA). https://pub.dega-akustik.de/DAGA_2024/files/upload/paper/98.pdf
For the full bibliography, please visit ACTOR publications.
Presentations
The “Fantaisie harmonique" project: Transposing the listening experience from the concert hall to virtual reality
The "Fantaisie harmonique" project in virtual reality, led ACTOR members Jason Noble and Caroline Traube, has been presented on May 7th, 2024, at the Journées d'informatique musicale (JIM 2024) in Marseille, France.
The paper describes a research-creation project aimed at adapting to virtual reality the multimodal, immersive experience of the concert presentation of a contemporary musical composition for double guitar orchestra. The special feature of this experience is that it places the listener-spectator at the center of a circle formed by the 12 performers, plunging them into the heart of the work's sonic texture. It also enables the listener's perspective to change in real time, exploring the inner workings of musical sound in a way that would not be possible in a frontal listening situation. The experience incorporates visual elements from the digital animations created for the presentation of the piece in concert. We conclude from this project that this mode of presentation is particularly well-suited to contemporary works whose aesthetics are characterized by varying degrees of fusion between the parts.
Schulich School of Music Teaching Award
ACTOR congratulates McGIll Professor Martha de Francisco for receiving the Schulich School of Music Teaching Award in the Full-Time Category. Additionaly, we congradulate ACTOR student member Theodora Nestorova for receiving the Schulich School of Music Teaching Award in the Graduate Teaching Assistant category. Congratulations to you both for your outstanding work and dedication!
Musiques sous un arbre - Centre des musiciens du monde
11 June - 18 July | 6:00pm
Parc Lahaie
Don't miss out on these presentations by our colleagues from the Centre des Musiciens du Monde happening every Tuesday and Thursday, from June 11 until July 18, at 6:00pm at Parc Lahaie. Read more
5-à-7 with Howard Skempton + Robert Hasegawa
June 14 | 5:00pm
Casa del Popolo | 4873 Boulevard Saint-Laurent
Free admission
On the occasion of his first visit to Montreal, composer and accordeonist Howard Skempton will talk with Robert Hasegawa (McGill University) about his beginnings with the Scratch Orchestra and Cornelius Cardew. Skempton will share with us his unique perspective as an active figure in the British experimental scene since the late 1960s. A unique testimony not to be missed!
Lena Heng
Lena Heng is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the psychology department at the University of Prince Edward Island. They graduated with an interdisciplinary PhD from McGill University Canada, under the supervision of Prof. Stephen McAdams. Their research interests centre around timbre perception and musical communication. They are especially interested in how prior knowledge shapes the listening experience, and how shared understanding as well as divergent interpretations emerge.
Lena’s doctoral research dealt with how timbre functions in the communication of affective intentions, and listeners’ continuous perception of affective intentions over the course of a piece of music. They examined how listeners with different musical backgrounds respond differently in music listening. In their postdoctoral work, they are extending their previous work by studying the perception of emotions in music and speech. They are also exploring narrative creation in music listening, the semantics of timbre, and analyses of music, focusing predominantly on aural analyses and on performers' and listeners’ interpretations of music. With several large-scale projects involving singing and music acquisition at UPEI, Lena is also researching the analysis of singing data, expanding the uses of singing as an assessment tool. In addition to assessing abilities and skill acquisition, this can also be used for tracking the development of neuromuscular degenerative conditions or assessing improvements of therapy.
Lena is passionate about encouraging an openness to different ways of listening and greatly enjoy talking and writing about music. They hope that this will spark curiosity and new ways of thinking about and listening to music. As an avid tabletop and boardgamer, Lena has designed a boardgame for music, hoping to introduce different musical traditions to people in a fun way while they are enjoying a game. They also play the violin in the PEI String Collective.
Workshop Y6
Y6 Workshop
Information about the Y6 Workshop is now available on a dedicated webpage. Visit ACTOR Y6 Workshop and check all the details about:
Registration
Zoom Access
Complete Schedule
Student Presentations
Lodging
Slack Channels
We would like to remind you that the event is open for all ACTOR members to participate whether in person or virtually. As usual, we will be focusing our time on active discussions, so our workgroup leaders will be uploading materials for you to peruse beforehand.
Timbre Semantics Workgroup Announcements
For any ACTOR members involved in timbre-semantics-related projects, we are looking to update our ongoing and completed projects list. If you are involved in a project, please send me the following either via Slack DM or to lreymore@asu.edu: project name, project leads/ACTOR members involved, and a 1–2 line description of the project, including a link to the publication, if complete.
We are looking for responses to the following calls for Y6 workshop content:
1. Call for discussion topics: The majority of the meeting will be dedicated to discussion of upcoming or ongoing collaborative projects that involve or are looking to involve multiple ACTOR members. The purpose of these topics is to plan for the upcoming year, establishing goals and action items. If you have a topic you’d like to bring to the floor, send us a short description of the topic/project.
2. Call for lightning update: any member is welcome to give a 1–2 minute update on a timbre-semantics-related project. We welcome announcements about projects that have been initiated this year, have been ongoing, or have been completed. In particular, if you have given a conference presentation or have an article published this year from a project, we encourage you to share that information at the workshop during a lightning update!
3. Call for featured presentations: Similar to last year, we will highlight one ongoing project from this year in a featured 15-minute presentation. If you have a project that was completed this year that you would like to present, send us the title and a short abstract to be considered for the presentation. The featured presentation will be selected by an ad-hoc committee from the applications, based on the abstract.
To respond to any of these calls, email Lindsey Reymore at lreymore@asu.edu.
OrchView - CORE files
Call for partiticipation. The CORE workgroup has selected 10 pieces from Rounds 1 and 2 across several universities, which have all been entered into OrchView for analysis with of Orchestral Grouping Effects or Orchestration Techniques. Download the latest version of OrchView and click on the button "CORE Ensemble" to access the .ovi files for these pieces.
If you find something interesting that you would like to communicate to the CORE Workgroup at the Vancouver Y6 meeting, just send an email to stephen.mcadams@mcgill.ca.
We hope to discuss various analysis approaches to individual pieces and comparative analyses across pieces and institutions at the Y6 meeting.
