Originally from Petty Harbour, Newfoundland, composer Jason Noble completed his doctoral studies at 不良研究所 and currently works as a postdoctoral researcher on the . During the application process, he pitched an idea for a new piece that would help bring ACTOR鈥檚 bubbling enthusiasm for timbre and orchestration outside of the academic community鈥攕omething allowing new audiences, especially young ones, to explore the wide and wonderful world of tone colour. With timbre, texture, dynamic shaping, micro-timing, and more, tone colour is one of the most powerful and expressive aspects of classical music, and yet it has been all but overlooked by traditional music analysis.
The ACTOR Project is building the tools to change that with their three major research axes: Analysis, Tool Development, and finally, Output Innovation. This third axis invites artists and scholars to integrate the fruits of ACTOR into the teaching, research, and creation of orchestration and timbre-related subjects. Output Innovation听is the focus of Jason鈥檚 postdoc, and Cameron Chameleon is perhaps the most colourful example of innovation yet! Read the interview below for more on the ideas behind this piece, and don鈥檛 miss the premiere on Friday, February 7 at 10am and Saturday, February 8 at 7:30pm, both in Pollack Hall.听If you can't attend in person, the concert on February 8 will be webcast on .
For you, what is so captivating about the idea of orchestration?
Many things. Current orchestration research overturns some assumptions that have been embedded in the way we have thought about music for a long time. Orchestration is a fairly ancient art, but a lot of music scholarship has been based on the assumption that pitch and rhythm are the two main parameters, that that鈥檚 what music is鈥攜ou write the notes, and then whatever tone colours you use to fill them in are nice but secondary. I haven鈥檛 believed that for a long time.
Sound itself is inherently fascinating and meaningful. There are so many aspects of the musical experience that pitch analysis doesn鈥檛 begin to touch: aspects such as timbre, texture, dynamic shaping, micro-timing for me are some of the most important, expressive aspects of musical experience. I love being active at a time when we鈥檙e turning our heads to get a fuller perspective on these enormously rich parts of music.
Why is it so important to share this idea with children?
It鈥檚 a very intuitive idea, for one thing. I think the only real reason kids draw with a box of crayons but don鈥檛 make music for orchestras is that for orchestras, you need fifty people and a whole bunch of expensive instruments! But kids can play with sounds just as well as they can play with colour. If you could boil that down to an app they can have in their living room, then I think they鈥檒l be able to be just as creative in the sound world as they are in the colour world.
On the other hand, in a world where people can pick up an iPad and hear all these amazing sounds, perhaps the motivation to spend twelve years getting good at playing violin is diminished. And so I don鈥檛 think we can take for granted that kids are always going to want to play instruments. If they do, it鈥檒l be because we manage to capture their imaginations and introduce them to the amazing things instruments can do.
We know that there all kinds of physical, mental, emotional, and cultural benefits that come with making music beyond just aesthetic pleasure. It would be a real shame for the next generation of kids not to benefit from that; I believe in music-making as a participatory activity for the general public, not just a small group of music specialists, and reaching out to that public through contemporary composition is a very high goal that I鈥檝e pursued for many years.
What鈥檚 the origin story for this piece?
I grew up loving pieces like Prokofiev鈥檚 Peter and the Wolf and Britten鈥檚 A Young Person鈥檚 Guide to the Orchestra. Then, a few years ago, I did this project with the Esprit Orchestra in Toronto, where my master鈥檚 supervisor and I went into classrooms and worked with kids to create pieces of music. The kids got to spit out ideas, and it was our job to turn it into a piece for the orchestra that they got to hear performed. It was a sweet deal for them!
On the same concert, though, there was a thirty-five minute narrated piece for symphony orchestra called A Young Person鈥檚 Guide to New Music by Canadian composer Brian Current. It blew me away. It was designed to introduce young audiences to all sorts of pitch-related, melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic ideas in contemporary music. Tone colour was there too, but fairly briefly near the end. The piece is absolutely brilliant, but I did think, 鈥淲ouldn鈥檛 it be great if there was also a piece that really focused on tone colour?鈥�
I think kids are imaginative and smart enough to get their heads around the ways sounds are combined if it鈥檚 presented to them in the right way鈥攖hey鈥檙e smarter than we let on sometimes! It鈥檚 about opening their eyes to all the different ways sounds can be combined into textures and effects: one instrument can stand out from the background, there can be several different layers happening together, multiple instruments can confuse into a single texture, and so on. The narration of Cameron Chameleon is definitely storytime, but these ideas of orchestration are there just beneath the surface.
The ACTOR Project defines orchestration as the choice, combination, and juxtaposition of sounds to achieve a musical goal. Can you give an example of how you approached this in Cameron Chameleon鈥攚hat was the goal and what sounds did you combine to achieve it?
First, the chameleon character makes a lot of sense for an orchestration-based piece because they change colours all the time; they can鈥檛 be simplistically paired with one instrument. In the first part of the piece, the various different colours and textures that Cameron can project are introduced with 鈥渕agical鈥� sound effects signalling changes from one colour to the next.
A good example of ACTOR鈥檚 definition of orchestration is the way Cameron begins each day. I wanted to get a good sense of textural integration鈥攄ifferent active instruments coming together into one single perceptual texture. So I decided to start the day with a feast of jungle bugs. Kids like things that are a little bit gross sometimes! If you鈥檝e ever been to the Insectarium and seen all the different shapes and colours that bugs can be, it鈥檚 quite a panoply.
I picked the woodwinds for this section, because for one thing, they鈥檙e the most heterogeneous family in the orchestra, and for another, woodwind players are generally used to doubling on multiple instruments. So the flutist will put down the flute and pick up the piccolo, the oboist will pick up the oboe and put down the English horn, and so on.
I ask all the woodwind players to change very rapidly between instruments, which creates a visual effect of a flurry of motion, a big tangle of bugs all crawling over each other. I ask them to be as animated and exaggerated as possible in their motions. Everyone鈥檚 tone colour will also be a little different; it won鈥檛 create a perfect blend, but rather a busy, dense texture with lots of energy and kinetic activity.
So we鈥檝e got the colours, the shapes, the activity, and the multimodal effect of having visual and auditory paired together. Another example: 鈥淗is tongue went zip and a bug went splat,鈥� which is captured by the violins. They go zip鈥攁 very fast gliss to the top of the instrument and while the bow shoots out like a tongue and then comes back. I鈥檓 not sure how that鈥檚 going to work with the music stands. I hope we don鈥檛 have any accidents!
What do you want audience members of any age to take away from your piece?
The interaction of words and music is a big one鈥攖he different ways that instrumental sounds come together and how that changes over the course of the piece in different contexts.
But I hope they鈥檒l get something out of the story, too. I started with this chameleon idea, developing different scenes appropriate for the chameleon鈥檚 daily life. By the end, though, the piece developed a real moral, because whether walking in the grass or in the riverbed鈥攖here鈥檚 even a game of chameleon hide and seek鈥擟ameron always uses his magical colour-changing ability to hide. There鈥檚 something sad about the idea of having that amazing ability and using it to make yourself blend in rather than stand out. I don鈥檛 want to give away the story, but in the end, that gets dramatically turned around.
Finally, if you were an animal, what would you be?
I would be my dog Kelly, because she鈥檚 spoiled rotten.
Listen to the Brian Current piece that inspired Jason below. Brian is one of our Graham Sommer Competition jury members! Don鈥檛 miss the premiere of Cameron Chameleon, along with Alain Berlaud鈥檚 L鈥檈nfant d鈥櫭﹍茅phant and Philippe Macnab-S茅guin鈥檚 Seizing to be ceased,听this weekend in Pollack Hall.听
听
