ACTOR Y7 Workshop 2025 — Geneva, Switzerland
It is official! We are pleased to confirm that the Y7 workshop will take place at the Haute école de musique in Geneva, Switzerland, 7-9 July 2025.
ACTOR Y6 Workshop 2024 — Vancouver
The Year 6 Annual Workshop will be hosted by the School of Music of the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, BC, Canada. It will be held in a hybrid format (online/in person). This year, the workshop will be preceded by a three-day edition of the second Timbre and Orchestration Summer School (TOSS).
The event page can be found here.
CIRMMT-ACTOR Symposium on Orchestration Research | 6th
The Analysis, Creation, and Teaching of Orchestration (ACTOR) Project and the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT) will be co-hosting a hybrid symposium on orchestration research.
Timbrenauts: Creative Explorations in Timbre Space
Speech as Timbre Models for Orchestration – a Comparative Study Between Cantonese and Québécois French
Masque de Fer
An investigation of choral blending through soundfield capture, acoustic evaluation, and perceptual analysis methods
CIRMMT-ACTOR Symposium on Orchestration Research | 5th
The Analysis, Creation and Teaching of Orchestration (ACTOR) Project and the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research is Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT) will be co-hosting a hybrid symposium on orchestration research on Friday, October 21, 12:00-1:30pm (EST). The event is open to all and will include presentations by ACTOR Postdoctoral Fellows Andrés Gutiérrez Martínez and Ben Duinker followed by a discussion period.
The Performer's Voice in Music Theory/Analysis Research – Ben Duinker
Timbre Topologies - Conception and Exploration of Timbral Similarity, Analogy, and Difference in my Creative Practice – Andrés Gutiérrez Martínez
ACTOR Y4 Workshop 2022 — Calgary
The ACTOR Y4 Annual Workshop will be hosted by the School of Creative and Performing Arts at the University of Calgary, in Alberta, Canada, from 9-11 July 2022.This year’s workshop will be held in a hybrid format (online/in person). We anticipate that this format will enable a greater number of members to participate. We are excited by the possibility to meet again in person and we encourage all to attend. The Workshop page is live, and more details will be available shortly. If you have any questions or suggestions, please contact Andre Martins de Oliveira at actor-project.music@mcgill.ca.
Concert: The Composer-performer Orchestration Research Ensemble (CORE) Project
The Analysis, Creation and Teaching of Orchestration (ACTOR) Project and the Schulich School of Music invite you to a lecture about the the Composer-performer Orchestration Research Ensemble (CORE) project presented by Professors Stephen McAdams (Music Technology) and Guillaume Bourgogne (Orchestral Conducting) on April 8 at 5:00pm EDT as part of the Research Alive Series. The event will take place in the Music Multimedia Room (Elizabeth Wirth Music Building) and will be followed by a concert at 7:30pm (EDT) involving musicians and composers from two iterations of the project. The lecture portion of the event will be webcast.
Research Alive: The Composer-performer Orchestration Research Ensemble (CORE) Project
The Analysis, Creation and Teaching of Orchestration (ACTOR) Project and the Schulich School of Music invite you to a lecture about the the Composer-performer Orchestration Research Ensemble (CORE) project presented by Professors Stephen McAdams (Music Technology) and Guillaume Bourgogne (Orchestral Conducting) on April 8 at 5:00pm EDT as part of the Research Alive Series. The event will take place in the Music Multimedia Room (Elizabeth Wirth Music Building) and will be followed by a concert at 7:30pm (EDT) involving musicians and composers from two iterations of the project. The lecture portion of the event will be webcast.
CIRMMT-ACTOR Symposium on Orchestration Research | 4th
This online event will consist of four 20-min presentations with 10 minutes of questions for each.
1. Explaining mental representations of sound semantics – Victor Rosi (IRCAM)
2. Musicians Auditory Perception (MAP) Project – Shahrokh Yadegari (University of California, San Diego) [PI] with ACTOR student members Jeanne Côté (McGill University), 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)
3. Masque de Fer – Martin Daigle (McGill University) and Gabriel Couturier (Université de Montréal)
4. Sounding the interaction of cultures: Orchestration techniques and perceptual effects – Lena Heng (McGill University), and Mengqi Wang (Université de Strasbourg)
ACTOR-CIRMMT Symposium on Orchestration Research
The event will include four presentations on the composer-performer collaboration based on the papers listed below. A discussion period will follow.
Composer-performer Orchestration Research Ensembles (CORE) – Stephen McAdams, Eliot Britton, Keith Hamel, Roger Reynolds, Caroline Traube
Documenting Composer-Performer Collaboration on Orchestrational Problem Solving – Yuval Adler, Robert Hasegawa, and Joshua Rosner
Orchestrational thinking and composer-performer relationships in the context of a collaborative creation process – Justine Maillard, Caroline Traube, Lindsey Reymore, Stephen McAdams
E-Rock: Creating Blend, Combining Styles, and Composing through Collaboration – Eliazer Kramer
ACTOR Y3 Workshop 2021 — Online
The ACTOR Y3 Workshop will be held online via Zoom from July 12th through July 16th. We are happy to announce that details about all the working groups meeting for a discussion is now available on our website. The full scheduled will be posted soon. Stay tuned!
Workshop on Timbre and Orchestration Taxonomies
The first Timbre and Orchestration Taxonomies Workshop was held virtually 29–31 May. Organized by ACTOR Postdocs, Lindsey Reymore, Kit Soden, and Matthew Zeller, the workshop brought together eleven scholars actively working to develop a variety of timbre and orchestration taxonomies. Over the first two days, participants gave presentations using Maurice Ravel’s Alborada del gracioso as the shared reference for each method. This pluralistic approach brought up engaging questions and facilitated discussions about the unique qualities of each taxonomic system. The third day was devoted to group discussion and proved to be intellectually stimulating and invigorating for all.
Atelier ACTOR A2 — virtuel
La 2e année de l’atelier ACTOR se déroulera en ligne du 13 au 17 juillet et accueillera des membres du monde entier. La séance plénière comprendra des présentations des deux nouveaux postdocs ainsi que des membres étudiants Yuval Adler (Université McGill), Eliazer Kramer (Université de Montréal), Ioannis Mitsialis (Université de Californie, San Diego), Victor Rosi (Ircam/Sorbonne Université) et Jithin Thilakan (Hochschule für Musik Detmold). Pendant les quatre jours de l’atelier, huit séances de groupes de travail auront lieu : Analyse du timbre et de l’orchestration, Acoustique des salles de concert, Ensembles de recherche sur l’orchestration contemporaine (EROC), Ressources sur le timbre et d’orchestration (TOR), Sémantique du timbre, OrchView et la taxonomie du groupement perceptif, Outils informatiques et IA pour l’orchestration. Les rapports finaux des réunions des groupes de travail sont disponibles sur le dépôt de données ACTOR.
Colloque ACTOR-CIRMMT sur la recherche en orchestration
Le compositeur Fabien Lévy se joindra aux chercheurs de McGill en théorie musicale, composition et perception musicale dans un symposium coparrainé par ACTOR (Analyse, création et enseignement de l'orchestration) et les axes de recherche 3 et 4 du CIRMMT. Levy, auteur de Le compositeur, fils oreille et ses machines à écrire : Déconstruire les grammatologies du musical pour mieux les composer, présentera une conférence matinale sur « l'orchestration fonctionnelle » suivie l'après-midi de présentations plus courtes sur des aspects de la théorie analytique et orchestrale appliquée au premier mouvement de la Huitième de Franz Schubert Symphonie et un atelier pratique d'analyse. Cet atelier est coparrainé par ACTOR, les axes de recherche 3 et 4 du CIRMMT et les domaines de composition et de technologie musicale de l'École de musique Schulich.
Colloque ACTOR-CIRMMT sur la recherche en orchestration
Les présentateurs sont la professeure Caroline Traube de l'institution partenaire ACTOR de l'Université de Montréal et les chercheurs postdoctoraux ACTOR Jason Noble et Julie Delisle de l'Université McGill. Après un aperçu général du projet ACTOR, les sujets incluront des projets avancés dans l'enregistrement sonore, les collaborations compositeur-interprète et la théorie et l'analyse de l'orchestration.
ACTOR Y1 Workshop 2019 — Paris
Forty ACTOR members from seven countries gathered in Paris, France from 13-15 July at IRCAM/Centre Pompidou for the second annual ACTOR Workshop. This year’s activities included a special session devoted to the work of student members.
ACTOR Kickoff Workshop 2018 — Montreal
ACTOR members gathered for an initial discussion on the goals of the project according to each sub-axis. Various topics crossing sub-axes were also covered such as 'Orchestration taxonomies,' 'Spatialization and room acoustic effects,' 'Development deployment of computer-aided orchestration,' etc.