Newsletter no. 14
Analysis, Creation, and Teaching of Orchestration Project
December, 2021
Happy Holidays to all!
Thank you to our members for sharing your timbre and orchestration news updates via the newsletter in 2021! We look forward to continuing to share your concerts, publications, project updates, and more in 2022. There will be no January newsletter; the next newsletter deadline will be January 31st. However, you are always welcome to submit updates at any time for the next newsletter! Until then, we wish you a Happy New Year!
Lindsey Reymore, Newsletter Editor and ACTOR Postdoc
ACTOR OUTCOMES
CREATIONS AND PRODUCTIONS
Premiere of "Bourdons" by Robert Normandeau
Robert Normandeau's piece for orchestra and speaker dome, Bourdons, was premiered by the Orchestre de l'Université de Montréal (OUM), conducted by Jean-François Rivest, on December 4th in the Salle Claude-Champagne at the Université de Montréal. Read more
"Paysage" and "Layers" by Jorge Ramos
Jorge Ramos's electroacoustic work, Paysage, was awarded Honourable Mention at the Música Viva Festival 2021 International Electroacoustic Composition Competition. His piece Layers for 2 Violins, Clarinet in B♭ and Trombone has been selected to be premiered and recorded in December by the Cat’s Cradle Collective Ensemble for the 2nd edition of Das Tripas Coração! Project. Read more
photo by Miso Music Portugal
PUBLICATIONS
New publications involving ACTOR members have been made available:
Dubois, D., Cance, C., Coler, M., Paté, A. & Guastavino, C. eds (2021). Sensory Experiences: Exploring meaning and the senses. Benjamins, Amsterdam, NL. https://doi.org/10.1075/celcr.24
Kazazis, S., Depalle, P. & McAdams, S. (2021). Ordinal scaling of temporal audio descriptors and perceptual significance of attack temporal centroid in timbre spaces. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 150(5), 3461–3473. https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0006788
Kazazis, S., Depalle, P. & McAdams, S. (2021) Ordinal scaling of timbre-related spectral audio descriptors. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 149(6), 3785-3796. https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0005058
Zachary Wallmark's monograph, Nothing but Noise: Timbre and Musical Meaning at the Edge, published by Oxford University Press, is now available for preorder, to be shipped January 21.
The print publication of the Oxford Handbook of Timbre, ed. Emily Dolan and Alexander Rehding (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021) is now available. The online version (paywall) remains live. Several chapters are authored by ACTOR members including Emily Dolan, Meghan Goodchild, Robert Hasegawa, Stephen McAdams, Alexander Rehding, Michael Tenzer, and Zachary Wallmark.
For the full bibliography, please visit ACTOR publications.
PRESENTATIONS
Dialogues: Analysis and Performance
Various ACTOR members' research was featured at the 2021 symposium Dialogues: Analysis and Performance, which was co-organized by Ben Duinker and took place in a hybrid format at the University of Toronto, 7-9 October.
Presentation recordings are now available to the public on the conference website. Presentations by ACTOR members include:
Eliot Britton (University of Toronto), Kevin McPhillips, David Arbez, and Patrick Hart (independent) - "Performing Corporate Culture: Analyzing Meta-Narratives and Online Interactivity Through Quigital."
Robert Hasegawa, invited guest (McGill University), "Analysis Workshop: Georgia Spiropoulos's Roll...n'Roll...n'Roll for solo harp and electronics"
Lena Heng (McGill University) and Megaria Halim (University of Western Ontario) - Helmut Lachenmann's Wiegenmusik for piano (1963), as part of the Workshop: Cross-Disciplinary Collaborations: Analysis and Performance.
Ryan McClelland, invited guest (University of Toronto), "Performance and Analytical Perspectives on Steve Reich’s Sextet"
Lindsey Reymore and Jacqueline Leclair (McGill University) - "Taking it off the page: Interpretation and performance-driven analysis."
AWARDS & HONOURS
ACTOR student member awarded Fromm Commission
Sang Song, a PhD candidate in composition at UC San Diego and ACTOR student member, has been awarded a 2021 Fromm Commission from the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University. Sang's new work will be premiered by the Argento Chamber Ensemble in New York City during their future concert season. Read more
Strategic & Research-Creation Project Funding
Five proposals were evaluated at Round 1 of the Strategic and Research-Creation Project Funding 2021-2022 (2 research-creation and 3 strategic project) by a jury consisting of Philippe Esling, Catherine Guastavino, Nathalie Hérold, Malte Kob, Stephen McAdams, and Jorge Ramos. None of the evaluators were involved in any proposal. The evaluation criteria used included the nature of the project, potential for training, benefit for ACTOR, budget justification, novelty of research, and feasibility of the timeline. The funded projects are listed below. Congratulations to all awardees!
STRATEGIC PROJECT:
Eliot Britton (University of Toronto) [PI] with Anthony Tan (University of Victoria), and external collaborators Nolan Hildebrandt (University of Toronto), and Steven Webb (University of Toronto). “A quick-start guide for combining electronic and instrumental orchestration.” $2,500
RESEARCH-CREATION PROJECTS:
Robert Hasegawa (McGill University) [PI] with Carmine Cella (University of California, Berkeley), Pedram Diba, Jonas Régnier, Anqi Liu (UCSD), Jeanne Côté, Charles-Eric Fontaine (McGill University), and external collaborators Alex Huyghebaert (McGill University), Matias Perenetti-Piniagua (McGill University), Éric Bourgeois (McGill University), Paul Celebi (McGill University), William Boivin (McGill University), and Seungwoo Han (McGill University). “Space as timbre (SAT).” $7,000.
Gilbert Nouno (Haute École de Musique de Genève) [PI] with Carmine Cella (University of California, Berkeley), and Kit Soden (McGill University). “Computer-assisted orchestration, machine learning, creation, and orchestration pedagogy.” $5,500.
For more information about these projects, visit - ACTOR Projects
ODESSA IV Composition Competition
The ODESSA IV research team is pleased to announce and congratulate Pablo Andoni Gómez Olabarría (Hochschule für Musik und Theater "Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy" Leipzig) as the winner of the ODESSA IV Composition Competition for ACTOR Student Members. His piece "Discanto II, theme and variations for violin ensemble" will be recorded at the Detmold University of Music sometime between March and May, 2022.
Olabarría is a Spanish composer and conductor currently based in Leipzig, Germany. His compositional style can be defined as instrumental drone music, influenced by various sources like the music of composers Giacinto Scelsi or Phill Niblock, as well as other traditions not related to new music such as early medieval music, Georgian polyphonic singing, or drone metal. Read more
UPCOMING EVENTS
Q-Arte y los Jóvenes Compositores 2021
December 16 | 6:00pm (EST)
Facebook
Tomás Díaz Villegas' piece 'De vuelta al terruño' for string quartet will be premiered online (pre-recorded broadcast) by Q-Arte (leading chamber ensemble in Latin America) on December 16 at 6 pm EST through the Facebook page of the Luis Ángel Arango Concert Hall (Bogotá, Colombia). This piece was chosen with three other compositions in the first version of Jóvenes Compositores, a national composition competition organized by the National Bank of Colombia in 2021. Read more
Orchestre Métropolitain: Le pelleteur de nuages
February 26 | 3:00pm (EST)
Maison symphonique de Montréal
The Orchestre Métropolitain will present a symphonic adaptation of Simon Boulerice's children's book Le pelleteur de nuages, a beautiful and immensely poetic tale telling the story of young Elliot, a little boy with an overactive imagination who has vitiligo. The book, illustrated by Josée Bisaillon, addresses themes of difference, diversity, stigma, inclusion and self-esteem. The performance will take place on February 26, 3pm EST, at the Maison symphonique de Montréal. Read more
ACTOR BUSINESS
Billboard Pro
We would like to inform members that ACTOR has subscribed to Billboard Pro, a subscription-based service offering personalized analytics that track online and social network activity, airplay, sales and other audience metrics to indicate success in today's music industry. If you wish to learn more details about the service and/or check how to access it for your project, contact Andre Oliveira.
PROJECT UPDATES
Bringing OrchView out of Beta
We’ve been working extremely hard this year to bring OrchView out of beta. You can expect a new version of OrchView to be released at the end of the calendar year for all ACTOR team members.
The OrchView team (Baptiste Bohelay, Daimen Duncan and Félix Frédéric Baril) has been working in parallel with Stephen McAdams, Alfa Barri and Shi Tong Li to harmonize the OrchView data-format with the OrchARD data model. It is now possible to build OrchARD database entries using an OrchView file without having to go through data conversion. This is quite a significant milestone for the project.
Since the last OrchView update, many features have been added to the software, most notably:
New “Home” screen with instant access (within the software) to OrchARD, TOR and the Orchestral Grouping Effects taxonomy. Other resources will be added in the future.
New interface to instantly download OrchView files ready to annotate. There are currently over 15 OrchView files available to download, most in XML format.
Integrated help for each annotation tool for Orchestral Grouping Effects, support for an integrated user manual (in development)
Batch export of annotations to PDF and AIFF files
Ability to lock annotations to prevent them from being accidentally modified
Ability to force-draw an annotation entry on top of another one (without having to hide the previous annotation)
Ability to transfer (cut & paste) annotation entries to different instrument groups
Added automatic start-time and end-time entries for annotations (for OrchARD)
Performance improvements, annotated C++ code
The most important changes to the orchestration techniques analysis tools design includes new "Timbral Manipulations" tools (designed by Denys Bouliane, Dominique Lafortune and Félix Frédéric Baril).
We plan to have a beta version of the Orchestration Techniques taxonomy in OrchView for the next ACTOR Workshop.
WEBSITE UPDATES
TMC Webpage
We are happy to announce that a new page for the Training and Mentoring Committee has been made available on our website. It contains information about various initiatives developed by the committee such as the Mentoring Program, the Abstract Proposal Workshop, and a directory of websites listing job opportunities. We hope this will be a useful resource to help our student members develop to their full potential.
ACTOR FOUNDING MEMBERS
Mathieu Schneider
Mathieu Schneider is a lecturer in musicology at the University of Strasbourg. He is a specialist in German post-Romanticism, the development of orchestral writing, and the representation of national identities in music. He is the author of four monographs (including one on Switzerland as a utopia in Romantic music, published by Hermann in 2016) and more than 70 articles, including some 40 in peer-reviewed journals. He has also curated four exhibitions related to Romantic music in France and abroad. Within the LabEx GREAM laboratory of excellence (which became the CREAA, Center for Experimental Research on the Artistic Act, in 2021), he leads a research workshop on orchestral writing at the turn of the 20th century and on the transition from the orchestra to the ensemble.
In the field of orchestral music, his research focuses on the symphonic repertoire at the time of the creation of the large orchestral formations. He has studied the evolution of the great symphonic forms (symphonic poems by R. Strauss, symphonies by G. Mahler) under the influence of a program and of romantic aesthetic theories. He also analyzed the symbolic and narrative role of instruments in the orchestra and the impact of Wagnerian theories on the orchestra and voices (notably through the concept of orchestral melody) in the construction and texture of German and French operas after 1870. This research now needs to be objectified by techniques of orchestration analysis, which is why he has been involved in the ACTOR project from the beginning.
Patrick Susini
Patrick Susini studied signal processing (Master's in telecommunications, University of Aix-Marseille) and acoustics (Master's in acoustics, University of Maine). He obtained a PhD in acoustics on "The evolving and global perception of non-stationary sounds", then an Habilitation (DSc) on the articulation between research in auditory perception and applications in sound design. He is currently a researcher in the Perception and Sound Design team of the STMS lab (Ircam-CNRS-Sorbonne Université).
In 2002 and 2004, Susini co-organized the first two international symposia on sound design in Paris. He was responsible for the Perception and Sound Design team from 2004 to 2019. In 2014, he received the 2014 Golden Research Decibel from the National Noise Council. In 2016, he became Senior Research Scientist at IRCAM and was awarded the Chavasse Prize by the French Acoustical Society.
He has coordinated or participated in national, European, and industrial projects and teaches in various Masters' programs (ACAR/SU, Musicology and Sound Design/Aix-Marseille, DNSEP Sound Design/ESAD-Le Mans).
For a long time, his work focused on the perceptual and acoustic characterization of the timbre of instrumental sounds and of different classes of environmental sounds. Next, his work focused on perceptual representations and interaction processes with everyday sound objects, which has led to several applications in sound design. More recently, he has been working on the semantic characterization of sounds—specifically, on the development of a lexicon to describe in words the perceived characteristics of a sound. The lexicon, finalized in 2021 and named words4sounds, is presented by the online platform SpeaK on the IRCAM Forum.
He is also working on temporal organization processes in hearing, focusing on the one hand on loudness asymmetries between crescendo and decrescendo sounds, taking into account the mechanisms of temporal integration of energy, and on the other hand, on local and global information processing of a sound sequence.
FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES
ACTOR Funding Opportunities Reinstated!
We are glad to announce that, following the removal of the global travel advisory by Global Affairs Canada and directives from McGill University, ACTOR has reinstated the Satellite Meeting Funding.
The purpose of this 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.
OPEN CALLS
Employment Opportunities for Student Animators and Film Makers
We invite applications from student animators and film makers (from ACTOR partner institutions) to work on a series of short edutainment films—four films at 2–3 minutes each. Two versions of each film will be made, one in English and the other in French. The production process will be in English. Services needed:
2D animation (all phases from storyboarding to final compositing)
Editing (working with ACTOR sound design and composers)
To apply, send a cover letter and representative examples of your work to Matthew Zeller by 1 January 2022.
Download the call for application (PDF) HERE. Read more
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.
