Evoking the human voice through instrumental music has been a perennial goal for composers, appearing in traditional performance instructions such as cantabile and contemporary practices such as formant modeling. Performers also make extensive use of vocal metaphors in their discourse. But do general listeners perceive instrumental music in terms of vocal qualities or metaphors? We will address this question by asking listeners to rate their perceptions of vocality in music intended to emulate it, followed by a proof-of-concept composition and performance.

The term "orchestration" is rarely used in reference to the string quartet, but when we define it broadly (after Stephen McAdams) as "the choice, combination, and/or juxtaposition of timbres in a musical context," it becomes clear that the quartet is a rich and highly flexible vehicle for the exploration of orchestrational ideas.

In three recording sessions taking place at the Haute école de musique (HEM) de Genève in October, 2019, different orchestral extracts were recorded so as to study several facets of orchestration and acoustics, such as timbral equilibrium and contrast.

Robert Hasegawa and colleagues from McGill, Université de Montréal, the Société des Arts Technologiques (SAT) and local new music ensembles planned an edition of the IRCAM Forum Workshop hors les murs in Montreal (April 2 to 5, 2020). This event brings together diverse Montreal institutions and offers an opportunity for exchanges between researchers and artists from IRCAM and their counterparts in Canada and the United States.