Newsletter no. 47
EN | FR
ACTOR OUTCOMES | UPCOMING EVENTS | ACTOR BUSINESS | MEMBERS SPOTLIGHT
ACTOR OUTCOMES
Creations & Productions
Amazing Moments in Orchestration
We’re excited to share our new promotional video Amazing Moments in Orchestration, featuring several ACTOR members! Click the link to watch the video and discover their favorite moments in orchestration history.
Publications
New research involving ACTOR members has been published.
Michel, P. (2025) Melodic motives and polyphonic textures in Sex Carmina Alcaei and other cycles of Luigi Dallapiccola’s Liriche Greche: A subjective approach to "perception units." In R. Illiano (Ed.), Luigi Dallapiccola between politics, text and musical thought (pp. 3–25). Brepols.
Michel, P. (2025). The composite timbre of Luigi Dallapiccola’s vocal and instrumental works since 1950: A study on writing, sound, and performance. In R. Illiano (Ed.), Luigi Dallapiccola between politics, text and musical thought (pp. 181-229). Brepols.
Tavakol, S. (2021). Un paradigme contemporain d'un principe hétérophonique propre au Moyen-Orient [A contemporary paradigm of a Middle Eastern heterophonic principle]. Intersections, 41(1), 127-157. https://doi.org/10.7202/1114855ar
Tavakol, S. (2024). Compte rendu de Fragments accordés. La composition musicale contemporaine et le monde arabe, par Anis Fariji [Account of Fragments accordés. Contemporary musical composition and the Arab world, by Anis Fariji], Revue musicale OICRM, 11(2), 240-252.
McAdams, S., Gianferrara, P. G., Korsmit, I. R., Goodchild, M. & Soden, K. (2025). Factors contributing to instrumental blends in orchestral excerpts. Music & Science, 8, 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1177/20592043251326391
Popular Media:
A series of new video tutorials has been added to the Orchestration Idea YouTube channel. These videos demonstrate the use cases and basic features of Orchidea software for computer-assisted orchestration, including the use of the Orchidea standalone application alongside the MaxMSP package. These tutorials were produced by ACTOR Student member Louis Goldford.
Presentations
BBC Interview - Martha de Francisco
Click on the link to to listen to ACTOR member Martha De Francisco's interview with the BBC for a radio program that was broadcast on International Women's Day.
UPCOMING EVENTS
CORE Round 3 Concert
10 April | 4:00pm
Music Multimedia Room
McGill University
The third round of the CORE project at McGill in 2024-25 included the original quartet (violin, bass clarinet, trombone, vibraphone) plus electronics. The final concert/presentation will take place in the Schulich School of Music's Music Multimedia Room at 527 Sherbrooke Street West at 4:00pm on Thursday on April 10, 2025.
PROGRAM:
Lorenzo Paniconi, monochrome
Jonas Regnier, Que le vent sonne les échos du paysage
Yulin Yan, The scent blind
Quartet: Olena Kaspersky, violin; Ostap Kuchmiy, bass clarinet; Erynne McPhee, trombone; Joseph Chang, percussion.
Conductors: Charles-Eric Fontaine, Jeremy Ho
Pedagogical team: Charles-Eric Fontaine, Andrés Gutiérrez Martínez, Stephen McAdams, Joshua Rosner, Louis-Michel Tougas
Book Launch
11 April | 6:00-8:00pm
Marvin Duchow Music Library
The Marvin Duchow Music Library and Prof. Stephen McAdams invite you to a book launch celebrating his new publication, Perception and Cognition of Music: The Sorbonne Lectures (Oxford University Press, 2024).
The event will be held in the Music Library on Friday, April 11, 2025, from 6pm to 8pm. Registration/RSVP
Perception and Cognition of Music: The Sorbonne Lectures presents a revised and updated edition of a book originally published in French in the MusicologieS series, which is based on distinguished lectures at the Université Paris-Sorbonne (2009) and Université de Montréal (2010). It bridges music psychology, theory, and analysis by exploring music listening through cognitive psychology. Auditory grouping processes help organize sensory information into musical units, while timbre, an often-overlooked parameter, is highlighted as a structuring element in orchestration. The development of abstract systems of musical knowledge focuses on cognitive processing of pitch systems and their role in forming hierarchical event structures. Finally, the temporality of music is examined through a collaborative project involving a composer, psychologists, and musicologists in creating The Angel of Death by Roger Reynolds and exploring its affective impact in a live-concert experiment. Each chapter ends with reflective elements to encourage a transdisciplinary approach to music scholarship.
Please join us in launching the publication of Perception and Cognition of Music: The Sorbonne Lectures. During a program beginning at 6:30pm, Stephen will speak about and read from his new book, and he will then be interviewed by Chris Paul Harman in what promises to be a phantasmagoric dialogue. Refreshments will be served.
Friday, April 11, 2025, 6pm to 8pm (program at 6:30pm)
Marvin Duchow Music Library
Elizabeth Wirth Music Building
527 Sherbrooke Street West, 3rd floor
Montreal, Quebec
Expansive Orchestration as a Teaching Resource
14 April
HarMA seminar
Valencia, Spain
ACTOR student member Marc Garcia Vitoria will give his presentation Expansive Orchestration as a Teaching Resource at the HarMA Seminar in Valencia, Spain. Drawing from his PhD research, the presentation will explore how composers use orchestration to expand musical material and demonstrate its value as a teaching tool in contemporary orchestration.
HarMA seminar is a gathering for European Music Theory teachers of high education institutions and it will take place April 14, 2025
Diversity Committee Meeting
9 May | 2:00-3:30pm
Online - Zoom
The ACTOR Diversity Committee will hold an open, online meeting on Friday, May 9 (14h00-15h30 EDT) to discuss efforts and approaches to fostering a continued commitment to equity, diversity, inclusion, and ability (EDIA) principles in ACTOR's successor, TONE. This is a brainstorming session, all are welcome, and all ideas are welcome! We will begin by looking at several paragraphs from the TONE SSHRC application to understand what has been proposed in general terms. The application discusses EDIA in both research design (topics, methodologies) and research practice (project governance and policies, team recruitment, education). We will then brainstorm on what specific policies, activities, and approaches can be undertaken to achieve what was proposed in the application.
Meeting information (for ACTOR members only)
https://mcgill.zoom.us/j/86015942869?pwd=d4Kt9pheDpOtO7VTrhodwEgign99sl.1
ID: 860 1594 2869
Passcode: 436957
Timbre Semantics Meeting
14 April | 10:00am
Online - Zoom
The Timbre Semantics Workgroup will be meeting on Monday, April 14 at 10:00am Eastern Daylight Time on Zoom: Zoom_Timbre-Semantics.url
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.
CORE Symposium - UCSD
25-28 April
University of California, San Diego
La Jolla, California
A special final CORE symposium and concert event is being organized by the University of California, San Diego in collaboration with the Talea Ensemble from New York City April 25-28 in La Jolla, CA.
Panel presentation/discussions:
Performance: Guillaume Bourgogne (Haute école de musique de Lausanne, formerly of McGill), Peter Ko (UCSD), Berk Schneider (UCSD), Bailey Wantuch (McGill)
CORE: Stephen McAdams (McGill), Caroline Traube (UMontréal)
Semantics: Lindsey Reymore (Arizona State University)
Computer processing and spatialization: Pierre Michaud (UMontréal)
Analysis: Robert Hasegawa (McGill)
Presentation of works: Roger Reynolds (UCSD), Rand Steiger (UCSD), Roman Carvajal Pardo (HEM), Snežana Nešić (UMontréal), Louis-Michel Tougas (McGill), Ni Zheng (UCSD)
Concert program:
Louis-Michel Tougas, Dégradés
Snežana Nešić, Musica ficta I: Chromaton
Roman Carvajal Pardo, Grammaire de l'intuition
Ni Zheng, Pleasure of refusal
Roger Reynolds, CO-EXISTENCE
Rand Steiger, Liminalities
Project Updates
Roger Reynolds - Updates
ACTOR member Roger Reynolds is currently revising his original "ACTOR Etude," CO-EXISTENCE. He is framing the 8-minute core of the piece with two additional sections: a 4-minute "Preparation" and a 4-minute "Departure." Both of these sections will feature four algorithmically generated cues along with instrumental resources.
Reynolds aims to introduce potential elements of the central 8 minutes through varied and irregular events in the "Preparation" phase, before spinning out components of the scalar blur that concludes the central section in the "Departure" phase. The final section is both dynamic and static, continually repurposing an 8-layer, 41-event pitch resource. The revised work is titled CO-EXISTENCE … framed.
Reynolds' piece will be performed along with compositions by Rand Steiger and four current and former CORE student participants by the New York based Talea ensemble at the CORE Symposium later in April organized by Stephen McAdams, Roger Reynolds and Rand Steiger, and Andrés Gutiérrez Martínez and hosted by ACTOR partner institution UC San Diego.
Other activities include a collaboration between Roger Reynolds and ACTOR student member Amit Gur from the Netherlands, focusing on an examination of texture in Reynolds' oboe concerto, JOURNEY. Gur, a former ACTOR mentee of Reynolds, has remained in contact with him since. Gur's dissertation explored texture from a generalized perspective rooted in Gestalt theory. In the paper they are preparing, Gur will apply his theoretical understanding of texture to specific passages in JOURNEY.
A second study of JOURNEY is being conducted by McGill doctoral student and ACTOR student member Linglan Zhu, in collaboration with Stephen McAdams.
JOURNEY is set to be performed in New York in late May, with the dedicatee, Jacqueline Leclair, as the soloist. An EKKOZONE CD featuring her remarkable premiere performance with Mathias Reumert's Danish ensemble in Copenhagen received the "Record of the Year" award from Danish Radio.
Finally, Reynolds and McAdams are preparing an article about the CORE initiative within ACTOR for a special issue of the Revue Musicale OICRM at the Université de Montreal.
Workshop
Y7 - ACTOR's Final Workshop
This year, the ACTOR project will be holding its final annual workshop. It will be our last chance to convene and talk about all activities developed within ACTOR's workgroups. As we wrap up this 7-year project, we will also have a chance to plan how the research will continue in the Timbre and Orchestration Network (TONE), a new Partnership Project currently under evaluation by SSHRC.
The event will take place in a hybrid format (online/in-person) in Geneva, Switzerland, July 7-9. Join us online for wonderful discussions and get updates about workgroups' activities. Don't forget to mark this on your calendar!
All the details, including the complete schedule and Zoom access information is available on our website: ACTOR Y7 Workshop. The event is free and open to all ACTOR members.
Joshua Bucchi
Joshua Bucchi is a French/US-American musician living in Quebec. He is a new music composer as well as performer who has played in various styles of improvised and popular music. His artistic practice is at the crossroads between contemporary instrumental/electroacoustic music, progressive rock, jazz and afro-cuban music and his training not only took place conservatories and academic institutions but also in jazz clubs, rock concerts and street rumbas. He received Bachelor (2011) and Master’s degrees (2013) from the Haute école de musique de Genève in mixed music composition where he studied with Michael Jarrell, Luis Naón, and Eric Daubresse. In 2016 he completed a DEPA in music composition for stage and film at the Université de Montréal and in 2023 was awarded a Doctorate (D.Mus) in composition and sound creation, under the supervision of Pierre Michaud. His work has received the support of the FRQSC and the Fondation Nicati-DeLuze and he was awarded the Prix du conseil d’état de Genève in 2013.
In the past years he has focused on the way in which new technologies and their associated practices could be voluntarily misused or hijacked within a creative process to allow for the emergence of authentic and original elements; this became the subject of his doctoral thesis. He also has a particular interest for the Ciné-Concert format and has worked on the creation of a show for percussion quartet and electronics for Charlie Chaplin short films. He has participated in the ACTOR project since 2019, notably in the first iteration of the Composer-performer Orchestration Research Ensemble (CORE).
