Newsletter no. 45
EN | FR
ACTOR OUTCOMES
TOR Spotlight
The Timbre and Orchestration Resource editors are happy to present two recent publications:
Across the Skies - Wenchen Qin
An Amazing Moments in Timbre piece by ACTOR Student Member Linglan Zhu. Read more
Orchestration for the String Quartet
A Research-Creation Project by the ACTOR Project and the Bozzini Quartet. Read more
Creations & Productions
Bass clarinet acoustic properties
Last week, ACTOR Postdoc Andrés Gutiérrez Martínez and bass clarinettist Chiara Percivati worked intensively at CIRMMT exploring the acoustic properties of bass clarinet multiphonics in relation to the performer's demands. The purpose of this research, in addition to the composition of a new collaborative work, is to discover the effect of fingerings, the agency of the performer, and the performance effort in the resulting sounds as a means of developing a comprehensive resource, which builds on and expands the existing literature on bass clarinet multiphonics for interested practitioners, composers, and timbre researchers.
Publications
New research involving ACTOR members has been published.
POPULAR MEDIA
Click on the link to read a recent interview of ACTOR Collaborator Jorge Ramos in which he talks about ACTOR and his involvement in it: PRXLUDES with Jorge Ramos
Click on the links to read and listen to ACTOR Student Member Linglan Zhu's public outreach co-authored publication on the timbral features of christmas.
"From bells to choirs, different ‘timbres’ ring in the Christmas holiday season". A non-academic article (co-authored with Aidan McGartland) published on The Conversation, introducing the concept of timbre to the general public in the context of Christmas music.
"What makes music sound like Christmas?". A short interview (also featuring Aidan McGartland) as a follow-up of The Conversation article was aired on CBC Radio on Dec. 24, 2024.
JOURNAL ARTICLES
Reymore, L., & Lindsey, D.T. (2025). Color and tone color: Audiovisual crossmodal correspondences with musical instrument timbre. Frontiers in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1520131
The publication is part of Frontiers in Psychology's special issue on crossmodal correspondences.
Fischer, M. & McAdams, S. (published online, 30/01/2025). Instrument timbre combinations influence the relative prominence of perceptual layers in orchestral music. Music Perception. https://doi.org/10.1525/MP.2025.2325705 [open-access preprint]
Presentations
Musical Instrument Museum - Stradivarius and other rare instruments
Watch Matt Zeller, former ACTOR post-doc and Curator for Europe at the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, on the Golden Age of Violins and Guitars exhibit at the MIM, presented on Arizona PBS.
From sound art to soundscape
ACTOR Student Member Valérian Fraisse defended his thesis at McGill in cotutelle with IRCAM - Sorbonne Université on November 27. His thesis is entitled From sound art to soundscape: a research-creation approach for designing and evaluating public space sound installations. His work caught the media's attention at the time of his defense, with several press articles and radio interviews (see below).
The thesis has been presented at IRCAM on January 15th, the presentation is available here: https://ressources.ircam.fr/fr/media/19f31729ee4ae6ab3b91 (in French only)
Société Radio-Canada (2024, Dec. 3). Des sons agréables pour contrer la pollution sonore. Le 15-18 [Interview with C. Guastavino, V. Fraisse and collaborators].
Mathieu Perreault (2024, Dec. 1). Des sons pour combattre le bruit urbain. La Presse.
Société Radio-Canada (2024, Nov. 24). Embellir les espaces urbains grâce aux paysages sonores. Les Années Lumières. [Interview with V. Fraisse]
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (2024, Nov. 15). What kind of impact can sound have on your surroundings? Let’s Go. [Interview with V. Fraisse]
UPCOMING EVENTS
Timbre Semantics Workgroup Meeting
10 February | 10:00am
Online - Zoom
The Timbre Semantics Workgroup will be meeting on Monday, February 10 at 10:00am Eastern time on Zoom: Zoom_Timbre-Semantics
We would like to have a general meeting with updates and discussion—all who are interested or intrigued are welcome—no prior involvement with any initiative is necessary. We will also have the opportunity to connect and share research updates, ideas, etc.
ACTOR Member Fabien Lévy's upcoming artistic, pedagogical, and academic activities:
Nôpera
27, 28 February, 1 March | 7:45pm
Théatre 2.21
Lausanne, Switzerland
Program:
à tue-tête, for 9 spatialised wind-instruments in darkness (17’, Ricordi ed., 2014/24, Premiere of the new version)
Noriko BABA: AOI - Nôpéra (60', 2015)
Ensemble contemporain de Lausanne, cond.: Guillaume Bourgogne, Nô singer: Ryoko Aoki
à tue-tête: In the real world, there is no beginning, no end, no center, no edge, no clear-cut unit. This applies not only to the universe, but also to our own human and acoustic dimension. Isn't the tumult of a train station, a market or a schoolyard more than the sum of their voices? Do we perceive a homogeneous, definable sound? Are we still able to distinguish each tree in a forest? Or does your gaze get lost in the intertwining of branches and leaves, unable to distinguish to whom they belong?
à tue-tête musically takes up this question. The model (requested by the commissioner) here is Giacinto Scelsi, who was one of the first Western composers, along with Varèse before, to refuse to reduce music to the artificially separated parameters of pitch, rhythm and dynamics, to delimited alphabets of notes, but who apprehended the sound phenomenon in its complexity and continuity. Music of other cultures have been doing this for long.
à tue-tête is not a folklorization of Scelsi's singular work, but rather a light-hearted, almost humorous questioning of our cultural listening habits through the prism of my own musical language. The musicians' space has no center, and the listener is continually lost between unity and multiplicity, between primary and secondary perceptions of seemingly clearly delimited musical objects. In addition, I set myself several strong musical constraints: a note [Bb] and a sixteenth-note pulse are continuously present throughout the piece. However, the harmony is changeable and the polymetries numerous (and mostly odd). Perception thus becomes paradoxical and, like life, à tue-tête [at the top of your voice].
Spring Pipes Festival
28 February | 7:30 p.m.
St-Martin Church, Kassel, Germany
Program:
Danse polyptote, for accordion & cello
Susanne Kujala: acc., Hugo Ranou: cello (9', Ricordi ed., 2012)
Towards the door we never opened, for saxophone quartet,
Fukio Quartett (11', Ricordi ed., 2012)
Lexèmes hirsutes & Anaphores, for solo cello
Hugo Ranou: cello (13', Ricordi ed., 2007)
Durch , in memoriam G. Grisey, for saxophone quartet
Fukio Quartett (8', Billaudot ed., 1998)
L'air d'ailleurs, for saxophone and electronics
Xavier Larsson Paez: sax. alto (9', Billaudot ed., 1997)
Jusqu'à peu, for the microtonal Rieger organ of St. Martin church, with two players, [Premiere of the new version].
Susanne Kujala & Eckhard Manz: organ (19', Peters ed., 2022/24)
Jusqu’à peu (2022/24, for organ with two players)
Adverbial locutions in French, which I often use as titles, often have the wonderful characteristic of containing several meanings. Jusqu’à peu means both until recently and until barely or until a little. The piece is indeed a crisis composition: covid crisis, midlife crisis, political crises, wars, climate crisis. All these crises, which have been lining up in a new pace for the last few years, have comparable characteristics: They emerge slowly, without being expected, and then explode in an uncontrolled way, often leaving a bitter and disillusioning aftertaste, if not despair, death and destruction. The climate crisis will perhaps be the last of these crises, challenging notions of human progress and perhaps leading to ultimate extinction.
Written for one of the most sophisticated instruments in human music, the piece remains on the symbolic level of these different crises, but follows the form and spirit of this emergence and decline.
Master-classes in composition in Spain:
March 6 & 7: Conservatorio Superior de Música de Aragón (CSMA), Saragossa, Spain, composition class of Prof.Guillermo Cobo
March 11 & 12: Real Conservatorio Superior de Música de Madrid, Spain, composition class of Prof. José Sánchez-Verdú
March 13 & 14: Conservatorio Superior de Música “Manuel Castillo” de Sevilla, Spain, composition class of Prof. Alberto Carretero
Bob Pritchard
Bob Pritchard (UBC DMA) is a Professor Emeritus (Music Technology) at the University of British Columbia. He taught at Douglas College and Brock University prior to teaching in the UBC School of Music for 31 years. He created the UBC Minor in Applied Music Technology, and his teaching abilities have been recognized with a UBC Killam Teaching Award, and a University of Melbourne VCA&MCM Master Teacher Award. He has been a member of ACTOR since 2018.
Pritchard creates gesture-controlled performance environments for musicians, dancers, and actors using Max/MSP/Jitter and wireless microprocessors such as Arduinos or ESP32s. Data from e-textiles, FSRs, infra-red imaging, and/or sound are used to control audio processing, manipulate media, trigger on-body lighting, or synthesize phonemes. Recent projects include his Tracking And Smart Textiles Environment (TASTE) project which developed Responsive User Body Suits (RUBS), and the UBC Dept. of Linguistics project Determining Regional Accents With Literature (DRAWL). His work Doshite? for Megumi Masaki uses a Sleeve Hand Responsive User Garment (SHRUG), and current research includes Flute Sensors for Interactive Environments (FluSIE).
He contributed a chapter to Performative Body Spaces (pub. Rodopi), and his saxophone piece Strength (2007) received a Unique Award of Merit from the Canadian Society of Cinematographers. His film Crisis is part of Robertson's cancer documentary 17 Short Films About Breasts, which received five Leo nominations, and was recommended to MOMA by Telefilm Canada. He is often commissioned by leading performers, ensembles, and organizations, and his works have twice been selected by Canadian juries for submission to the International Society of Contemporary Music.
Pritchard’s work has been funded by SSHRC, Canada Council/NSERC, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Ontario Arts Council, UBC Arts-TLEF, UBC GoGlobal, and others. He served as Chair with the BC Region Canadian Music Centre, and was part of the founding of the Canadian Electroacoustic Community.
Fundraising for Chidi
ACTOR Student Member Chidi Obijiaku still needs our help! We were happy to hear that he has been released from the hospital. However, only 29% of the money needed for his treatment has been raised. Chidi is one of our student members from the University of the Witwatersrand and is going through a tough battle against tuberculosis. He was hospitalized in October and was told by the doctors that his treatment might take up to 6 months. His health insurance does not cover all medical costs and expired in December. For that reason, his friends and family have started a campaign to raise funds and ensure that Chidi receives the comprehensive care that he needs.
We'd like to invite the ACTOR community and all those who can, to join in this drive and contribute to Chidi's recovery. See more details in the link below:
https://www.backabuddy.co.za/campaign/support-chidi-obijiakus-road-to-recovery
