Overview

 
 

McGill University

OVERVIEW to Round 1

The Composer-Performer Orchestration Research Ensemble (CORE) is an ACTOR project where student composers and performers explore matters of orchestration through a research-creation process. McGill University’s first year of the CORE project was implemented as a year-long weekly seminar organized into 4 phases during the 2019-20 academic year:

  • An introduction phase included five lectures on timbre and orchestration from different perspectives, such as perception, performance, and aural sonology notation. The students then briefly presented as well - the composers presented seed ideas, and the performers presented their respective instruments and some of their capabilities as an ensemble. This phase was shared with the composition students from UdeM.

  • The exploration phase included improvisations and readings of sketches ranging from graphic scores to short written sections.This phase was shared with the composition students from UdeM.

  • The problem-solving phase consisted of rehearsals of in-progress drafts of the composers’ work, allowing for feedback from the performers and iterated revisions.

  • The realization phase consisted of the last rehearsals of the completed 8-10 minute pieces. It was also intended that rehearsals of pieces sent from the other CORE project institutions would happen, culminating in a final concert. These very last rehearsals and final concert were cancelled due to COVID-19 restrictions.

MATERIALS GENERATED AND ARCHIVED

  • PowerPoint presentations of lectures

  • Early sketches (diagrams, music notation, descriptions of targeted effects, audio recordings to imitate)

  • Scores at various stages (including scans of some conductor's scores)

  • Audio recordings (stereo) of all workshop sessions

  • Video recordings of selected lectures and workshop sessions

  • Video interviews in French or English

  • Transcriptions of all interviews

Previous
Previous

Report — Quentin Lauvray

Next
Next

Participants