Timbre and orchestration are essential aspects of musical experience in any culture or style. They enable us to effortlessly identify different genres of music and are particularly important in popular musics. This centrality is reflected in Timbre and Orchestration in Popular Song (TOPS), a three-day conference hosted by McGill University's Schulich School of Music and the ACTOR (Analysis, Creation and Teaching of Orchestration) Partnership. The conference features keynote presentations by Nina Sun Eidsheim (UCLA) and Kevin Holt (Stony Brook University), and workshops by Lindsey Reymore (Arizona State University), Nicole Biamonte (McGill University), Claire McLeish (Third Side Music), and Megan Lavengood (George Mason University).

TOPS convenes scholars, producers, performers, and audiences of popular music for keynote lectures, workshops, posters, and papers, united under the theme of how timbre and orchestration give rise to critical and analytical accounts of genre, identity, performance, production, and perception. The conference schedule overlaps with the ACTOR's third annual Timbre and Orchestration Summer School (June 3–7), which is designed for advanced undergraduate students, graduate students, postdocs, and early-career researchers.

Abstract deadline: February 1, 2025

Host: Schulich School of Music (McGill University), ACTOR Partnership

Website: www.mcgill.ca/tops2025