Note from the Director
“I would like to welcome all ACTOR members to our first hybrid workshop, which wraps up our fourth year of activities. It’s really exciting to be able to meet in person again and, yet again, I hope that all ACTOR members managed to maintain their activities over the last year in spite of the challenges presented by the pandemic. It is encouraging to note that many of the collaborative activities were able to continue virtually, ensuring that this year’s slate of workgroups will once again demonstrate the resourcefulness and devotion of our research-creation community. We are looking forward to seeing everyone and hearing about your work over the course of the workshop.
—Stephen McAdams
About the workshop
The ACTOR Y4 Annual Workshop will be hosted by the School of Creative and Performing Arts at the University of Calgary, in Alberta, Canada. This year’s workshop will be held in a hybrid format (online/in person). We anticipate that this format will enable a greater number of members to participate.
The Analysis, Creation, and Teaching of Orchestration (ACTOR) partnership involves musicians, humanists, scientists and engineers to deepen the understanding of the many roles that timbre plays in music in interaction with all the other musical parameters. Every year, this group of timbre aficionados gets together to have updates on the three main axes of the project (i.e., (1) Analysis, (2) Tool development, and (3) Output innovation) which translates into research projects, technological development, artistic productions, and pedagogical initiatives. Aside from building the ACTOR community, facilitating networking, and fostering collaboration, the annual workshop also includes presentations given by student members during the plenary session and reports of activities presented by the Project Director, Professor Stephen McAdams, the Training and Mentoring Committee (TMC), and the Knowledge Mobilization Committee (KMC).
Workgroups
Here is a complete list of workgroups and their respective leaders.
*Please note that the links to supporting materials will take you to ACTOR’s repository. If you experience problems accessing it, contact actor-project.music[at]mcgill[dot]ca
- Orchestration analysis taxonomies and the Orchestration Analysis and Research database – Orch.A.R.D (Stephen McAdams). Supporting materials
- Diversity working group (Robert Hasegawa). Supporting materials
- Artificial intelligence and computational tools for orchestration (Philippe Esling). Supporting materials
- Computer-aided and target-based orchestration – Orchidea (Carmine Cella). Supporting materials
- Acoustics of musical performance rooms (Malte Kob). Supporting materials
- Composer-performer orchestration research ensembles – CORE (Stephen McAdams). Supporting materials
- OrchView (Félix Baril). Supporting materials
- Timbre and Orchestration Resource – TOR (Kit Soden). Supporting materials
- Timbre semantics (Caroline Traube and Zachary Wallmark). Supporting materials
- Voice working group (Juanita Marchand Knight). Supporting materials
- Timbre and orchestration analysis (Robert Hasegawa). Supporting materials