Newsletter no. 48
EN | FR
ACTOR OUTCOMES
TOR Spotlight
Virtual Acoustics in Joint Performance
This study explores how changes in room acoustic conditions impact musicians’ awareness and perception of their surroundings, with a particular focus on ensemble performance. To achieve this, we employ virtual acoustics, a technique that allows precise manipulation of room acoustic properties through the process of auralization. Learn more
An Investigation of Choral Blending through Soundfield Capture, Acoustic Evaluation, and Perceptual Analysis Methods
This investigation represents the culmination of a series of choral blend experiments conducted in the Multimedia Room (MMR) at McGill University during October 2022. In this experiment we investigated singers’ perception of choral blend, having them perform varied repertoire in several acoustic environments and ensemble spacings. Learn more
Close-Microphone Techniques for Capturing Individual Instruments in Ensemble Performances
Accurately capturing individual sound sources when recording a multi-musician performance requires a crucial balance between obtaining “acoustically clean” signals from each instrument and preserving musicians' visual and auditory feedback from co-performers and the room acoustic environment. This TOR module discusses why close-miking techniques are the optimal choice for musical performance research as they offer a viable approach that inherits the qualities of joint performances by incorporating collaborative performance strategies, audio-visual feedback between musicians, and room acoustic feedback into the recordings. This allows for the investigation of the source-level blending between instruments in realistic joint performances under in-situ acoustic conditions. Learn more
Creations & Productions
Contemporary Orchestration
On March 26, 2025, the Concert of the graduate seminar "Composing, performing and analyzing contemporary orchestration” took place in the Serge-Garant hall of the Faculty of Music of Université de Montreal
This concert presented compositions created by graduate students in composition, performance and musicology, as part of an interdisciplinary seminar given by Jimmie LeBlanc, Kit Soden and Caroline Traube.
Resulting from a collaborative creative process aimed at exploring work on timbre and the perceptual effects of orchestration, these works cover a wide spectrum of instrumental combinations including voice, flute, shakuhachi, oboe, clarinet, saxophone, trumpet, gheychak, viola, cello, piano, accordion, bandoneon, electric guitar, and electronic devices.
This seminar follows on from the Ensembles de Recherche en Orchestration Contemporaine (EROC) projects carried out as part of the SSHRC ACTOR (Analysis, Creation and Teaching of ORchestration) partnership.
Monographic CD - Fabien Lévy
Kairos recently released Fabien Lévy's new monographic CD with five compositions, from solo instrument to large orchestra. The CD can be purchased at Kairos-music.com The CD is also available online (without booklet): Spotify, AppleMusic, Youtube, AmazonMusic, etc.. The booklet can be downloaded after registration at Kairos-music.com
Premiere - Kotsanas Museum
After being in residence at the Kotsanas Museum of Ancient Greek Technology, Composer Jorge Ramos will compose a new musical work for the museum entrance, designed to immerse visitors in a unique sound world that ties together the museum’s exhibitions into one cohesive sonic experience.
The piece will premiere in September 2026 and will be a permanent part of the museum’s exhibitions. Additionally, the composition will lead to an album release and online concerts in 2026.
CORE Symposium at UC San Diego
From April 25-27 ACTOR members from different institutions met at UC San Diego to present the outcomes of the several rounds of CORE. The symposium consisted of six panels: Performance, CORE, Semantics, Spatialization, Analysis, and Composition, as well as a concert by the Talea Ensemble.
The thoughtful and provoking presentations were accompanied by profound discussions on the different areas mentioned above. The outcomes of the symposium will be turned into a special publication in the future.
If you missed the live stream of the concert, you can watch the formidable concert of the Talea Ensemble performing the four compositions written by graduate students at several ACTOR partner instiutions and two UC San Diego faculty members composed in the frame of the CORE project. The symposium and concert were organized by Roger Reynolds, Rand Steiger, and Stephen McAdams with the assistance of ACTOR Postdoc Andrés Gutiérrez Martínez.
Thanks again to everyone involved, to UC San Diego for hosting us, and to the Talea Ensemble for their unforgettable performance!
AWARDS & HONOURS
German Rome Prize
Congratulations to Fabien Lévy who has been nominated for the German Rome Prize at the Villa Massimo starting Sept. 1, 2025. The nomination comes 22 years after Lévy's reception of the French Rome Prize at the Villa Medicis in 2002-2003.
UPCOMING EVENTS
Diversity Committee
9 May | 2:00pm
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 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 Workgroup Meeting
12 May | 10:00am
Online - Zoom
The Timbre Semantics Workgroup will be meeting on Monday, May 12 at 10:00am Eastern Daylight Time on Zoom: Zoom_Timbre-Semantics.url
We will aim to do a retrospective of the year and plan our Y7 meeting. 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.
Knowledge Mobilization Committee Meeting
14 May | 2:00-3:30pm
Online - Zoom
ACTOR's Knowledge Mobilization Committee is holding an open meeting on Wednesday May 14, 2pm-3:30pm EDT. All ACTOR members are welcome. The topic of this meeting will be a discussion on the current status and future trajectory of the Timbre and Orchestration Resource (www.timbreandorchestration.org). We will have a structured brainstorming session on how to best solicit feedback from the ACTOR community—through an online survey available during the month of June, and an in-person real-time user experience study held during our Y7 meeting in Geneva. This meeting is thus your chance to provide input on how the survey / user study will be designed.
Zoom details will be sent by Slack closer to the date. Hope to see you there!
9th ACTOR-CIRMMT Symposium on Orchestration Research - CORE
16 May | 11:30am-1:30pm
Hybrid - Zoom/Room A832
This month, we will have our last ACTOR-CIRMMT Symposium on Orchestration Research focusing on CORE Rounds 3 and 4 held at McGill and UMontréal in the 2024-2025 term.
The seminar will include four presentations by graduate composers from both institutions who were part of the CORE project. The aim of the symposium is to learn about the composers' strategies, compositional and orchestrational decisions in the context of electroacoustic and live-electronic music.
Program TBA
The symposium will take place May 16 from 11:30am to 1:30pm EDT in room A832 of the Elisabeth Wirth Building of the Schulich School of Music. Remote attendance is supported.
Zoom link for the event:
Zoom link https://mcgill.zoom.us/j/85701934210
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.
Caroline Traube
Caroline Traube is Full professor in the Faculty of music at the Université de Montréal. Her main fields of research and teaching are music acoustics, psychoacoustics, digital musicology and performance studies. She holds degrees in music technology (PhD, McGill University) and in electrical engineering and telecommunications (Eng., CCRMA, Stanford University, USA; Ir. Faculté Polytechnique de Mons, Belgium), and she also studied piano and electroacoustic composition.
Actively promoting interdisciplinarity in music, science, and technology, as well as knowledge transfer between the scientific and artistic communities, Caroline is member of three music research centres based in Montreal: the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT), co-leading the "Cognition, perception and movement" research axis, the Observatoire interdisciplinaire de création et de recherche en musique (OICRM) and the International Laboratory for Brain, Music and Sound Research (BRAMS).
Contributing to the musicology area at Université de Montréal, she has developed a collaborative research framework inscribed in interdisciplinary and empirical musicology, to study Western musical practices from the experiential knowledge of musicians. As a member of ACTOR, her research focuses on the phenomenon of multimodal production, perception and semantic description of instrumental timbre, as well as on orchestration and its acoustic realization by performers. She has played a major role in the realization of the first ODESSA project, taking place at the Université de Montréal in 2018, and of four editions of the CORE project.
At the Faculty of Music, she has held the position of associate dean for the composition and sound art area and has contributed to the establishment of several study programs in the field of digital musics and composition for screen. She has also developed fruitful collaborations with the School of Medicine at Université de Montréal, bridging across disciplines such as kinesiology and audiology, which can support the healthy development of performers.
Zachary Wallmark
ACTOR founding member Zachary Wallmark is a musicologist with an interest in popular music, timbre, and music cognition. He is currently Associate Professor and Area Chair of Musicology & Ethnomusicology at the University of Oregon. Wallmark has taught undergraduate and graduate courses on popular music history and analysis, music and emotion, sound studies, film music, hip-hop, timbre, music and politics, and American roots music, among other topics.
Working at the intersection of the cognitive sciences and musicology, Wallmark’s research seeks to account for the role of musical timbre in emotional response, aesthetic judgment, and music sociology, particularly in the context of post-1945 American popular music. His book Nothing but Noise: Timbre and Musical Meaning at the Edge (Oxford, 2022) explores the slippery psychoacoustic and social fault lines separating perceptions of musical timbre from “noise,” with reception case studies drawn from free jazz, extreme heavy metal, and traditional Japanese music. Wallmark’s work has been published in both musicological and scientific journals, including Emotion, Ethnomusicology Review, Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, Journal of the American Musicological Society, Music Perception, Music & Science, Music Theory Online, Psychology of Music, and Psychomusicology. He is also coeditor (with Robert Fink and Melinda Latour) of the award-winning volume, The Relentless Pursuit of Tone: Timbre in Popular Music (Oxford, 2018).
Wallmark’s research has been profiled in the national news media, including Newsweek, Psychology Today, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, and NPR. His work has also been supported by the NEH and the GRAMMY Museum Foundation. Wallmark has been active in the ACTOR timbre semantics working group and has been part of several collaborations with ACTOR colleagues resulting in articles published in Music Perception, Attention Perception & Psychophysics, and The Oxford Handbook of Orchestration. In addition to his academic work, Wallmark is a published composer, commercial musician, jazz bassist, and bluegrass dobro player.
