Newsletter no. 37

Written By ACTOR Research Team

Newsletter no. 37

Analysis, Creation, and Teaching of Orchestration Project

 

 
 

 

TOR Spotlight:

The History and Future of the Tuba Family

The Timbre and Orchestration Resource Editors are happy to announce our latest published article, "The History and Future of the Tuba Family: Material-, Resonance-, and Performance-based Perspectives," by ACTOR Collaborator Jack Adler-McKean. The article examines the intersections of acoustics, materiality, and performance through the tuba and its low-brass ancestors.

 
 

New research involving ACTOR members has been published.

Members of the Timbre in Popular Song (TiPS) project (an ACTOR active project) are pleased to announce the publication of an article discussing their Anti-Discriminatory Alignment System (ADAS) for building more equitable corpora:

  • Nicholas Shea, Lindsey Reymore, Christopher William White, Ben Duinker, Leigh VanHandel, Matthew Zeller, and Nicole Biamonte, “Diversity in Music Corpus Studies,” Music Theory Online 30.1 (March 2024)

For the full bibliography, please visit ACTOR publications.

Jean-Louis Chautemps, le passeur

On March 14th, ACTOR member Pierre Michelparticipated in the conference "Les cultures du son au saxophone autour de Joshua Hyde" with a presentation entitled Jean-Louis Chautemps, le passeur. The presentation focused on the work and legacy of the French saxophone player at the intersection between composed and improvised music.
Read more

Les bienfaits de la musique

ACTOR member Caroline Traube contributed to the latest episode of the Curium youth program on the subject of the benefits of music, instrumental timbre, and communicating emotions through music. In this episode, she discusses the physical nature of instrumental sounds and the harmonic frequencies of which they are composed. The capsule also includes an excerpt from a rehearsal by the Orchestre de l'Université de Montréal, conducted by Jean-François Rivest, and an exchange on instrumental timbre with several of the orchestra's performers.

Follow the link to watch the episode: https://ici.tou.tv/curium/s01e24

La couleur du son : du concept de timbre à l'analyse de l'orchestration

On March 20th, ACTOR member Nathalie Hérold delivered her presentation La couleur du son : du concept de timbre à l'analyse de l'orchestration in the frame of the inter-university seminar " La couleur au croisement des arts " organized by Frédéric Billiet, Catherine Naugrette, Emmanuelle André, Patrick Narid, Clothilde Roullier, Thomas Vernet, the Sorbonne University, University Sorbonne Nouvelle, University Paris 7, University Paris 8, the National Archives, and the Royaumont Foundation. The presentation was held at the André Pirro hall of the Sorbonne University in Paris.

Evo Outstanding Students 2024

Francesco Maccarini and Mael Oudin, two ACTOR student members, presented their paper "Co-creative orchestration of Angeles with layer scores and orchestration plans" at the EvoMUSART conference, which took place from April 3-5, 2024. They have been nominated as Evo Outstanding Students 2024 for their work. The paper, written with Mathieu Giraud (Université de Lille/CRIStAL) and Florence Levé (Université de Picardie Jules Verne/CRIStAL) will be published in the proceedings of the conference.

ACTOR Y6 Workshop - Student Presentation Funding

Congratulations to the student members selected to present at the plenary session (July 15) of the Y6 ACTOR Workshop in Vancouver:

  • Annie Liu (University of Oregon): Shanghai nights: The cultural politics of vocal timbre in Chinese popular music, 1930–49

  • Francesco Maccarini (Université de Lille): An experimental framework for computer-assisted orchestration

  • Chidi Obijiaku (University of Witwatersrand): Intersections of timbre and structure in Nigerian music: A case study of Akwu-eche-enyi

  • Yifan Huang (McGill University): Affective qualities of sustained instrumental blend

  • Kjel Sidloski (Université de Montréal): Revisiting the original synthesizer: Spectral analysis and synthesis of a Casavant Frères pipe organ for creative application in an augmented instrument context

"Au-delà du souffle" by Laurie Radford

27-29 May
NoiseFloor Festival
Lisbon, Portugal

Laurie Radford's 8-channel electroacoustic piece Au-delà du souffle will be given its European premiere at the NoiseFloor Festival in Lisbon, Portugal in May 2024. Read more

Emily I. Dolan

photo by Nick Dentamaro

Emily I. Dolan is Associate Professor and Department Chair at Brown University. Dolan works on the music of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, focusing on issues of orchestration, timbre, aesthetics, and instrumentality. She is the author of The Orchestral Revolution: Haydn and the Technologies of Timbre (Cambridge University Press, 2013) and is co-editor, with Alexander Rehding, of The Oxford Handbook of Timbre (2021). She has published articles and essays in Current Musicology, Eighteenth-Century Music, Studia Musicologica, Keyboard Perspectives, Representations, and 19th-Century Music and has essays forthcoming in Cambridge Opera Journal and The Journal of the American Musicological Society. Currently she serves on the Board of Directors of the American Musicological Society and the Board of Governors of the American Musical Instrument Society.

Dolan is completing her second monograph Instrument and Order. This project examines the material and immaterial lives of musical instruments in late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe. The book follows three intertwined threads: instruments’ status as historical objects and the roles they play in the construction of broader histories of music; narratives of instrumental invention and obsolescence; and evolving ideas of instrumentality. Dolan is also in the early stages of a new project that explores the historical processes by which timbre occasionally has become marginalized and what these forms of subordination can tell us about the history of listening more generally. This summer, Dolan is looking forward to teaching in the Second Timbre and Orchestration Summer School in Vancouver.

Pierre Michel

After gaining his degrees in Musicology at the Sorbonne (Université Paris IV), Pierre Michel taught at the Strasbourg Conservatory before taking up the post of Lecturer at the University of Metz and then at the University of Strasbourg in 1998 (where he was appointed Professor in 2008). Pierre Michel had met Ligeti at the Acanthes-Academy (Aix-en-Provence) in 1979, and the composer supported him in the project of writing a book on his music: the result was the first book on Ligeti to be published in French in 1985 (Éditions Minerve, Paris), with interviews made in Vienna in 1981. After that Pierre Michel published several other papers on the “Chamber concerto” and “Le Grand Macabre”, and produced a webdocumentary in 2016 on the “Trio for violin, horn and piano” for UOH (Université Ouverte des Humanités). He then produced together with Philippe Lalitte a special issue of Musimédiane concerning Ligeti's "Ten Pieces for Woodwind Quintet". He translated an important part of the second French volume of Ligeti’s writings entitled “L’atelier du compositeur” (Éditions Contrechamps, Geneva). He has organized numerous conferences and workshops with musicians and has also published articles and books about composers like Luigi Dallapiccola, Bernd Alois Zimmermann, Klaus Huber, Hans Zender, Franco Donatoni, Wolfgang Rihm, Gilbert Amy, Paul Méfano, and Walter Zimmermann. He edited several volumes of writings by composers in France: Ferruccio Busoni, Luigi Dallapiccola, Gilbert Amy, Tristan Murail (also available in English), Hans Zender, and Wolfgang Rihm. He has supervised many MA and PhD theses and edits several French publications. He implemented the project to set up the GREAM Centre of Research Excellence (in 2011), which he directed until 2016. He is also a musician, mainly in the field of jazz, with bands like "Bise de Buse" and "Ovale". His research work covers Western art music since 1945, including modern jazz.

ACTOR Workshop report available

We would like to inform all ACTOR members that the report of the Y5 Workshop in Strasbourg is now available in the Data Repository. Please take a few moments to review the notes from each session and check all action items assigned to you. This will help us ensure that activities and research being carried out within every workgroup will proceed as expected. Should you have any comments, suggestions, or questions on how to access the report, please do not hesitate to contact us.

 
 

Y6 Workshop - Registration & Accommodation

We are happy to confirm that the Y6 workshop will be held in Vancouver, July 15-17, at the University of British Columbia! For those who are new to ACTOR or have never participated in a workshop, the basic plan for the event's agenda is to have a Plenary Session on Day 1 and Workgroup Sessions on Days 2 and 3 followed by a brief Wrap-up Session at the end of Day 3. 

The Plenary Session includes reports from various committees as well as presentations from students and lightning talks by members on ongoing projects (see tentative schedule below for more details). Workgroup Sessions, on the other hand, are interactive discussions where members get updates on workgroups' activities and plan future projects or initiatives.

REGISTRATION (for self-funded participants only)
We would like to invite self-funded members attending the event to register via the following link. Registration is free.
https://forms.office.com/r/g4Xnf82min
 
Lunch and dinner will be offered free of charge in all three days of the workshop. However, members will have to cover their own travel and accommodation expenses.
 
Members whose travel is being funded by ACTOR, such as Institutional Representatives, don't need to register.
 
LODGING
We have made arrangements with UBC Conferences and Accommodation to offer our members the following options:
     1. Gage Suites – Signature Studio – $198 + 13% tx per night
Studio with queen bed, private washroom, Air conditioning, work desk with telephone, flat-panel TV and WIFI, fully-equipped kitchen and complimentary coffee. Maximum 2 guests per studio.
     2. Place Vanier Residence - $60.00 + 13% tx per night
This low-cost accommodation is a great option for students. With mixed rooms (single/double), the Place Vanier residence has shared hallway washrooms, with male and female washrooms located on alternate floors. Limited housekeeping service is available (i.e., linen is provided; guests bring their own towels and soap). Complimentary Wi-Fi is included. Buildings offer a social lounge with TV, fridge, sink and microwave on every floor and are equipped with elevators. Note that guests may be placed on single or double rooms (i.e., sharing with other participants). This will be determined later on, depending on the number of guests
 
Note that the UBC campus is rather isolated from downtown Vancouver (approximately 30-min by bus), thus it might be difficult to find hotels nearby.

To book your accommodation, please fill out the online registration form (link above) and send us an email including:

Preferred lodging (Gage Suites or Place Vanier)Check-in dateCheck-out date

Rooms are limited! Book your room soon, before we are full!
Payment should be completed upon arrival, by cheque made to "McGill University," and submitted to André Oliveira (not UBC!). Complete instructions will be sent once the reservation is confirmed.

SCHEDULE
July 15 (Monday)

  • 8:45 Welcome Coffee

  • 9:00 Opening remarks

  • 9:15 Student Presentations

  • 11:00 TOSS Poster Session

  • 12:30 Lunch1:30 Lightning Talks

  • 2:20 Student Grant Presentations

  • 3:20 Coffee break

  • 3:50 Admin session

  • 4:50 ACTOR 2.0

  • 5:40 Closing Remarks

  • 7:00 Dinner 

July 16 (Tuesday)

  • 8:45 Welcome Coffee

  • 9:00 Timbre and Orchestration Analysis | Orchidea

  • 10:30 Coffee break

  • 11:00 Interdisciplinary Studies | Room Acoustic

  • 12:30 Lunch

  • 1:30 Host Highlight Session

  • 3:00 Coffee break

  • 3:30 AI | Timbre in Afrological Music

  • 6:00 Dinner

  • 7:30 Concert

July 17 (Wednesday)

  • 8:45 Welcome Coffee

  • 9:00 Orchestration Pedagogy | Timbre Semantics

  • 10:30 Coffee break11:00 Voice | CORE

  • 12:30 Lunch1:30 Diversity

  • 3:00 Coffee break

  • 3:30 Wrap-up Session

  • 5:00 Closing remarks

  • 6:00 Dinner
    For more details, visit the ACTOR Y6 Webpage

ACTOR Research Team
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Newsletter no. 36