Y4 | Director's Report 2021-22
Project Blog | Project Updates | Director’s Reports | Stephen McAdams | July 9th, 2022
ACTOR Director's Report 2021-22
I would like to welcome to all ACTOR members to the workshop wrapping up our fourth year of activities. As we transition back to some form of normal life again, many of the collaborative workgroups have been very active, demonstrating once again the resourcefulness and devotion of our community to our common passion.
ACTOR Post-docs
The two outgoing post-docs have been very active in keeping ACTOR moving ahead on several fronts, both intellectual and administrative. And we should all thank Lindsey Reymore and Matthew Zeller for their fantastically productive research and organization efforts over the last two years. Lindsey has studied both the role of timbre semantics in and of itself as the relation between sound properties, perceived musical qualities, the concepts they give rise to and the words used to frame them. In addition to serving on the Executive Committee, she also turned the Newsletter and social media output into regular and viable modes of knowledge mobilization for the ACTOR Partnership. Matt has explored the history and analysis of the concepts and practices of Klangfarbenmelodie, particularly in the music of Schoenberg and Webern. He has also begun a project on the role of timbre in inflecting narrative meaning in popular music. He helped revitalize the Training & Mentoring committee, spearheading several important initiatives such as proposal-writing workshops, a mentoring program and the development of Edufilms on ACTOR and its output. Lindsey and Matt were both involved in the Strategic Project on Timbre In Popular Song (TIPS) with other ACTOR members, developing new methods for timbral corpus analysis and the role of timbre in form in popular musics of different genres. We certainly wish them the best in their future endeavours and are sad to see them go.
However, we are also delighted to welcome two new post-docs who will be joining us in the Fall: Benjamin Duinker from the University of Toronto on the Analysis Axis and Andrés Gutiérrez Martínez from the University of California, San Diego on the Output Innovation Axis. Ben is a percussionist and music theorist particularly interested in timbre structures in contemporary and pop music (he has collaborated with the TIPS project), as well the role of rhythm and metre in the construction, performance, and perception of rapped vocals of hip-hop music. He is also co-founder of the ensemble Architek Percussion. Andrés is a composer with interest in both acoustic and electroacoustic works, as well as a recording engineer and music scholar. He has been very active with the CORE project at UCSD, having participated both as composer and as recording engineer in defining the CORE Round 1 recording protocol. He has numerous pieces that have been performed internationally with a strong focus on timbral structure and expression. We welcome Ben and Andrés wholeheartedly to the ACTOR Project and look forward to their many timbral and orchestrational contributions.
Funding Opportunities
Collaborative Student Grant
Three collaborative student grant projects were funded in 2021-22 (Heng/Wang, Daigle/Couturier, Zhang/Thilakan) and two new ones have just been accepted for 2022-23 (Adler/Schneider, Xu/Tougas). These are designed to facilitate inter-institutional collaborations. We have funding for four each year, so please inform your students about this opportunity for collaborative timbre and orchestration research across institutions. The deadline for new applications is 15 April 2023.
Strategic and Research-Creation Projects
One strategic project (Britton/Tan) and two research-creation projects (Hasegawa/Cella, Nouno/Cella/Soden) were funded in the September 2021 round, and one Research-Creation project (Pritchard) and two strategic projects (de Francisco/Kob, Sokolović/Soden/Noble/Freund/Hugill) have been accepted for the March 2022 round. We will have $12,000 for the second round in September 2022.
Student Exchanges
One student exchange (Moranis) was funded in the November 2021 round and two exchanges have been accepted for the April 2022 round (Adler, Jacobsen). We have funding for three exchanges each year, so student members should not hesitate to apply. The deadline for new applications is 15 November 2022.
Project Updates
The publications, realizations, and concerts related to ACTOR's mandate from individual members within a given institutional partner are too numerous to list here. In particular, the numerous inter-institutional collaborations demonstrate the usefulness of the partnership in stimulating research and new thinking on timbre and orchestration from many perspectives. Details of recent activities for each active Workgroup are available on the Y4 Repository, as well as their agendas for the workshop sessions and materials to peruse in advance to facilitate discussion and planning of new collaborative activities.
Composer-performer Orchestration Research Ensembles (CORE) [S. McAdams, R. Reynolds, C. Traube]
Computational Tools [P. Esling] Repertoire Diversity [R. Hasegawa]
OrchView [F. Baril]
Orchidea [C. Cella]
Room Acoustics and Performance [M. de Francisco, M. Kob]
The Timbre and Orchestration Resource [K. Soden]
Orchestration Analysis Taxonomies and OrchARD [K. Soden, S. McAdams]
Timbre and Orchestration Analysis [R. Hasegawa]
Timbre Semantics [Z. Wallmark]
Timbre, Orchestration, and the Human Voice [J. Marchand Knight]