Newsletter no. 19

Written By ACTOR Research Team

Analysis, Creation, and Teaching of Orchestration Project

 

 

CREATIONS AND PRODUCTIONS

"Denise" by Jason Noble

Jason Noble's chamber opera piece, "Denise," written for J Marchand Knight (voice), was premiered via livestream video recording on May 27th at the Watershed Festival. The ensemble included ACTOR members Martin Daigle (percussion), Julie Delisle (flute/piccolo/bass flute), and Lindsey Reymore (oboe/English horn). You can watch and listen here.

PUBLICATIONS

New publications involving ACTOR members have been made available:

  • Rosi, V., Houix, O., Misdariis, N. & Susini, P. (2022). Investigating the shared meaning of metaphorical sound attributes: Bright, warm, round, and rough. Music Perception, 39(5), 468–483. https://doi.org/10.1525/MP.2022.39.5.468

 

 

Circuit - Musiques contemporaines

The latest issue of the journal Circuit - Musiques contemporaines (Volume 32, Number 1, 2022), edited by François-Xavier Féron and Liao Lin-Ni, has just been published. Titled "L'orgue à bouche entre extrême-orient et occident: L'invention d'un répertoire contemporain," it contains contributions from three ACTOR members: Julie Delisle, Robert Hasegawa, and François-Xavier Féron. The publication of this issue of Circuit - Musiques contemporaines was supported through ACTOR funding.

For the full bibliography, please visit ACTOR publications.

 

 

PRESENTATIONS

Timbre, orchestration, analysis: Different projects under development

Nathalie Hérold recently presented on "Timbre, orchestration, analyse : différents projets en cours de développement" at the seminar "L'IReMus présente..." in Paris on May 12th.

 

 

Encoding and analyzing a new corpus of popular songs

On May 20, the poster "Encoding and analyzing a new corpus of popular songs" by Lindsey Reymore, Ben Duinker, Matthew Zeller, Leigh VanHandel, Nicholas Shea, Christopher William White, Jeremy Tatar, Jade Roth, and Nicole Biamonte was presented at the Music Encoding Conference by Ben. Ben and Nicole hosted the discussion sessions about the poster, which tied for first place for the People's Choice Best Poster award. Lindsey also presented a poster on the project at CIRMMT's recent conference, Le Son du Futur/Le Futur du Son, on May 26. The project team looks forward to sharing updates on this project, which has been supported by an ACTOR Strategic Project Grant, during the Y4 workshop.

Theorizing African American Music Conference

16-18 June
Case Western Reserve University

Joshua Rosner will be presenting a paper titled "Afrological approaches to timbre in big band orchestration" at the inaugural Theorizing African American Music conference, which will take place at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH, June 16–18. The project expands on work presented by Joshua at the Year 3 ACTOR workshop.

 

 

Y4 Workshop

We would like to invite all ACTOR members to participate in person or virtually in the ACTOR Y4 Workshop wrapping up our fourth year of activities. The event will take place in Calgary, July 9-11, but it will also be accessible via Zoom. The complete schedule, including the list of student presentations and Zoom info, is now available online.

This year, as usual, we want to focus our time on active discussions among our members, so our workgroup leaders will be uploading materials for you to peruse beforehand. You can check these materials as well as the Slack channels created for each workgroup HERE.

For more information, please visit our website or contact Andre Oliveira.

Not a member yet? Visit our General Information page and learn how to apply for membership in time for the workshop.

AWARDS & HONOURS

Student Presentations

9 July, Rozsa Centre, University of Calgary
Congratulations to the student members selected to present at the plenary session (July 9) of the Y4 ACTOR Workshop:

  • Theodora Nestorova (McGill University): Timbre perceptions of vocal vibrato

  • Chelsea Komschlies (McGill University): Did Messiaen draw from shared crossmodal correspondences within his synesthetic colour system?

  • Ninon Devis (IRCAM): Deep audio learning for novel timbre generation

  • Louis-Michel Tougas (McGill University): Compound figures in my CORE piece "Étude for ensemble"

  • Ehsan Fard (Hochschule für Musik und Theater Leipzig): Principles of Gestalt psychology as a means for emergent orchestration

For full abstracts and times of presentations, visit: ACTOR Y4 Student Presentations

 

 

Strategic & Research-Creation Project Funding

At Round 2 of the Strategic & Research-Creation Project Funding 2021-2022, three proposals were evaluated (all strategic projects) by a jury consisting of Stephen McAdams, Bob Hasegawa, Philippe Esling, Caroline Traube, Nathalie Hérold, Catherine Guastavino, Lindsey Reymore, 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 project, feasibility of the timeline, and student support. The funded projects are listed below. Congratulations to all awardees!

 

 

Collaborative Student Project Grant

We are pleased to announce the recipients of the Collaborative Student Project Grant 2022! Congratulations to Yuval Adler, Berk Schneider, Darren Xu, and Louis-Michel Tougas. This funding opportunity will provide student members with support for research in summer 2022 while promoting interinstitutional collaboration. The funded projects include:

 

 

Student Exchange

We are pleased to announce the recipients of the Student Exchange 2022! Congratulations to Yuval Adler (McGill University) and Simon Jacobsen (University of Oldenburg) who will be studying at University of California, San Diego and McGill University, respectively.

Lena Heng

Lena Heng is an interdisciplinary PhD candidate in the Music Perception and Cognition Lab at McGill University Canada, under the supervision of Stephen McAdams. With a background in both psychology and music from Singapore, their research interests centre around timbre perception, musical meanings, and musical communication. They are especially interested in how prior experiences and knowledge shape the listening experience and understanding of music, and how shared understanding as well as divergent interpretations emerge.
This interest began with introspection into their own listening processes and thinking about how their own experience and expertise with classical music and the Chinese music traditions contribute to their understanding of music. Being an active performer also ignited their desire in understanding how various aspects of a sound can bring about or highlight certain facets of the music and communicate content to a listener.
Lena’s research has 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 have looked at how listeners with different musical backgrounds respond differently in perceiving musical affect. In addition, they have also worked on analyses of music, focusing predominantly on aural analyses and on performers' and listeners' interpretations of music. They are passionate about encouraging an openness to different ways of listening and greatly enjoy talking and writing about Chinese music. While acknowledging that this is but one musical tradition amongst the many around the world, they do hope that this will spark curiosity and new ways of thinking about and listening to music.

 

 

Berk Schneider

Berk Schneider, trombone (berkschneider.com), serves as an advocate for the arts by cultivating research-creation projects that incorporate an interdisciplinary approach to technology and analysis of social meaning-making devices, promoting prescriptive methods that bring communities of musicians closer together. He investigates how listeners map sonic boundaries and performance contingencies over time and space, e.g., how memories impact and are influenced by supposed immutable/dynamic semiotics, flourishing improvisations, and ingrained auditory habits. This approach includes the creation of distinct and often interactive sonic environments in which tacit knowledge can be exchanged readily between participants — fueling practices that not only reflect the time-honored traditions of western classical music, but also today’s diverse international artistic community through examination of the impact of culture and experience on music cognition. Many of his research opportunities were made possible by the ACTOR partnership. His collaborations are varied, having worked with musicians such as Joshua Bell, Josh Groban, conductors Valery Gergiev, Brad Lubman, Enno Poppe, Carlos Miguel Prieto, Helmuth Rilling, Robert Spano, composers Beat Furrer, Philip Glass, Helmut Lachenmann, Alvin Lucier, actor Alexander Fehling, the Akron, Firelands, and Houston symphonies, Ensemble Modern, Schauspiel Frankfurt, as well as creative director Heiner Goebbels. He is a graduate of Oberlin Conservatory, Rice University, Frankfurt University of Music, and has been a finalist and honorably mentioned in numerous international trombone competitions, including the Robert Marsteller Competition and Lewis Van Haney Philharmonic Prize.

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. 

 
 
ACTOR Research Team