Newsletter no. 42
ACTOR OUTCOMES
Creations & Productions
“Munda Me” by Jorge Ramos
On September 28, the ORA Singers and Suzi Digby OBE premiered ACTOR Collaborator Jorge Ramos's newest work Munda Me for Choir as part of the ensemble's 2024 Graduate Composers' Showcase at the. Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff. Read more
Publications
New research involving ACTOR members has been published.
Michel, Pierre. (2022). Editorial: The music of Pascal Dusapin: Current and retrospective views. Musique en Acte, 3, 5–6.
Two new publications on sound art installations in public spaces led by ACTOR student member Valérian Fraisse. Valérian will be defending his thesis entitled: From sound art to soundscape: a research-creation approach for designing and evaluating public space sound installations in the Fall (date TBD).
The first paper is a case study report featuring four installations in Montreal. The second one is a case study in Paris (Valérian is doing a cotutelage between McGill and Sorbonne Université).
Fraisse, V., Tarlao, C., & Guastavino, C. (2024). Shaping city soundscapes: In-situ evaluation of four sound installations in an urban public space. Landscape and Urban Planning, 51, 105173. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2024.105173
Fraisse, V. , Schütz, N., Wanderley, M., Guastavino, C., & Misdariis, N. (2024). Using soundscape simulation to evaluate compositions for a public space sound installation. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 156(2), 1183-1201. https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0028184
For the full bibliography of ACTOR, please visit ACTOR publications.
Presentations
The orchestrion in the 21st century: The incidence of the accordion in my musical language
On Tuesday September 24, 2024, ACTOR student member Snežana Nešić of the Faculty of Music of the University of Montreal defended her thesis dissertation L’orchestrion du 21e siècle : incidence de l’accordéon sur mon langage musical (The orchestrion in the 21st century: The incidence of the accordion in my musical language)
The dissertation committee included:
Jimmie LeBlanc - Committee Chair
Ana Sokolović - Research advisor
Jonathan Goldman - Research co-director
Sylvain Caron - Committee member
John Rea - External committee member
Abstract
In my artistic research, I focus on the influence of certain keyboard instruments of the aerophone group, which I call "orchestrion"- type instruments and which have clearly influenced my compositional work. Apart from the mechanical instruments of the same name, I use the generic term "orchestrion" to refer to all aerophone keyboard instruments in the history of music which, like today's accordion, have been able to represent a sonic "totality", both as soloists and as members of various ensembles. At different times in history, this type of instrument had several instrumental representatives (e.g. the organ or the harmonium) and I treat the modern accordion as a significant representative of the orchestrion group of instruments today. More broadly, I see the intensive development of this instrument over recent decades as a necessary response to a historical tendency manifested in the continued presence of the orchestrion archetype in the history of music. Although the ideal of this archetype remains unattainable, the emergence and refinement of its concrete instrumental representatives persists continuously throughout history. Thus, this work explores the influence of the orchestrion-type instrument on my compositional work, but also examines the associated orchestrion archetype which, as a universal category, exerts an influence not only on my own compositional thinking and practice, but also on those of other composers.
UPCOMING EVENTS
Critical Listening to Timbre as Jewish Religious Practice: The Shofar Service
17 October
Online - Zoom
ACTOR Student member Joshua Rosner will present a paper titled Critical Listening to Timbre as Jewish Religious Practice: The Shofar Service on October 17 in the frame of the 69th annual meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology, which will take place virtually October 17th-26th. Read more
Workgroups
Timbre Semantics Workgroup Meeting
21 October
Online - Zoom
The Timbre Semantics Workgroup will be meeting on Monday, October 21 at 1pm Eastern time on Zoom (Please contact LREYMORE[at]asu.edu for the zoom link). Our focus topic will be on organizing the Cross-linguistic Semantics Project—all who are interested or intrigued are welcome—no prior involvement with this initiative is necessary. We will also have the opportunity to connect and share research updates, ideas, etc.
Functional orchestration: principles, recent findings, prospects
24 October | 12:00-2:00 EDT
Online - Zoom
Fabien Lévy, composer, professor for composition at the University of Music and Theater "Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy" Leipzig
October 24, 2024, 12:00-2:00 (EDT), 18:00-20:00 (CET)
Zoom: https://mcgill.zoom.us/j/2632309272
An online lecture and discussion organized by the ACTOR Timbre and Orchestration Analysis Workgroup
Functional orchestration is an approach to orchestration (orchestration practice as well as music theory and orchestration analysis) that attempts to link orchestration techniques with perceptual effects by considering their musical and perceptual goals (functions). Although its origins date back to the 90s (Marc-André Dalbavie at the CNSMDP), the discipline has evolved considerably over the last ten years, thanks to exchanges between various ACTOR experts.
In this short session, Lévy will take a quick look at the general principles underlying this approach, as well as recent findings (e.g. conceptualization and categorization of various known techniques such as doubling, coupling, texturing, “tree-logic,“ “rhizomatic“ orchestration, sound-mastering techniques, etc.) and discuss still open research questions and possible future developments with other ACTOR researchers.
Orchestration Pedagogy
06 December | 11:00-1:00 EDT
Online - Zoom
The ACTOR Project Training and Mentoring Committee is organizing the first Workshop on Orchestration Pedagogy with the participation of Fabien Lévy (Hochschule für Musik und Theater 'Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy' Leipzig), Victor Cordero (Haute École de Musique de Genève), Lena Heng (University of Prince Edward Island), Kelsey Lussier (McGill University), and Félix Frédéric Baril (McGill University). The event will focus on various approaches to teaching orchestration through demonstrations, discussions, and the examination of orchestration syllabi. This free event is open to ACTOR members and anyone interested in orchestration pedagogy. We invite you to sign up and participate in this informative session.
Registration is required: https://airtable.com/app8gRjxBogIgqZsH/shrmerDYx3X1s945i
Join Zoom Meeting
https://mcgill.zoom.us/j/81199014175?pwd=DpHKr196WAcOm5r5zzXF94HHh9p3Iq.1
Meeting ID: 811 9901 4175
Passcode: 137765
ACTOR BUSINESS
Project Updates
Roger Reynolds - Work Report
Composer Roger Reynolds has submitted a report including several recent pieces that have been shaped by perceptual issues and considerations. Follow the link to know more about the composer's creative process for each of the pieces and their relationship to the ACTOR project.
MEMBERS SPOTLIGHT
Moe Touizrar
Moe Touizrar holds a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship supervised by Daphne Tan (Music Theory/Music Perception) at the University of Toronto and a parallel research affiliation with the University of Helsinki. He received his Ph.D. in 2020 from McGill University, where he studied composition with John Rea and music perception and cognition with Stephen McAdams. While at McGill, he lectured courses in music theory, music perception and cognition, and delivered a graduate seminar on interdisciplinary methodology. From 2021 to 2024, he held research positions in Finland at the University of Jyväskylä and the University of Helsinki, supported in part by a grant from Finland’s Kone Foundation.
Moe’s research lies at the intersection of music theory and music perception, interweaving perceptual, phenomenological, and aesthetic facets of musical experience to forge a better understanding of orchestral music's depictive capacity. His dissertation, “From Ekphrasis to Apperception: The Sunlight Topic in Music,” examines the role of timbre and form in orchestral depictions of sunrise and sunset through the lens of perception, rhetoric, and memory. Currently, Moe is co-editing the Oxford Handbook of Orchestration Studies (OUP, 2025) and co-leads ACTOR’s “Arts, Humanities, and Interdisciplinary Methodologies” workgroup. His music has been performed in Canada, the USA, and Finland.
