ABOUT

Ben Duinker is a Montreal-based music researcher, percussionist, educator, and choral singer. Raised in a musical family from Halifax, Nova Scotia, he first studied civil engineering but switched career paths at age 21. Duinker holds a PhD in Music Theory and a MMus in Percussion Performance from McGill University and is currently a researcher with the ACTOR (Analysis, Creation, and Teaching of Orchestration) Project. He also performs and tours with the Montreal-based quartet Architek Percussion.

Research

Duinker’s research spans various genres of popular and art music—focusing especially on hip hop—and addresses analytical topics such as rhythm and meter, tonality, timbre, performance, and orchestration. He uses data-driven corpus studies and music analysis as a starting point to explore popular music’s production, creation, perception, and reception. Completed in 2020 under the supervision of Nicole Biamonte at McGill University, his doctoral dissertation on hip-hop flow was awarded an SMT-40 Dissertation Fellowship by the Society for Music Theory. Duinker also undertakes research that connects his dual backgrounds as a theorist and performer specializing in contemporary art music. This work uses analysis of recordings, ethnography, and pedagogical methods to explore topics such as interpretive difficulty, embodiment, and experiential learning. Duinker developed this analysis/performance research under the supervision of Aiyun Huang at the University of Toronto, where he held a SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada) Postdoctoral Fellowship (2020–2022). In 2021 he hosted the inaugural Dialogues: Analysis and Performance symposium at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Music, bringing together artists and scholars of contemporary music for three days of presentations, performances, and exchange. Duinker presently works as a postdoctoral researcher at McGill’s ACTOR (Analysis, Creation, and Teaching of Orchestration) Project, where his work focuses on diverse topics such as expressivity in percussion performance, trap music, and chord voicing in Renaissance polyphony.

Duinker’s research is published or forthcoming in the journals Current Musicology, Empirical Musicology Review, Journal of Music Theory, Journal of Popular Music Studies, Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy, Music Theory Online, Music Theory Spectrum, Popular Music, and SMT-V, and in Xenakis Matters, a collection of analytical essays on the music of Iannis Xenakis. He has presented his work at conferences, roundtables, and invited talks in Canada, the United States, and Europe, and has held numerous fellowships and grants from SSHRC, FRQSC (Fonds de recherche societé et culture du Québec), and the Montreal-based Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT).

Performance

Duinker has performed extensively across Canada and concertizes periodically in the United States and Europe. Across a 15-year career in percussion, he has premiered some 100 works for solo, chamber, and large-ensemble idioms. Early in his career, Duinker specialized in solo percussion, winning prizes at the OSM Standard Life Competition, PASIC Solo Percussion Competition, the Universal Marimba Competition, and the Prix D’Europe. His concerto performances have been described as displaying “breath-holding physical grace” (the Halifax Chronicle Herald) and as “revealing exceptional dexterity and precision” (La Presse, Montreal). More recently Duinker has turned to chamber and ensemble music, working with groups such as Sixtrum, Ensemble Contemporain de Montreal, Collectif9, SMCQ, Bradyworks, I Musici, Voces Boreales, Viva Voce, and (insert TITLE) Marimba Duo, which he co-founded with Greg Samek. Since 2013 his most frequent outlet for performance has been Architek Percussion, a Montreal-based quartet that has premiered over 60 works, toured extensively across Canada with occasional visits to the United States and Europe, and appeared on eight albums. Duinker's principal teachers were Aiyun Huang, Fabrice Marandola, and James Faraday, and he has performed in masterclasses and with Keiko Abe, Steven Schick, and Bogdan Bacanu. He appears on recordings released by DAME/Ambiances Magnétiques, ATMA Classique, Centrediscs, Constellation Records, Line Imprints, Mode Records, and Redshift Records, and has performed on numerous live recordings made by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Duinker’s performance activities have been continuously and generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, le Conseil des arts et lettres du Québec, le Conseil des arts de Montréal, and the SOCAN Foundation.

A choral singer since childhood, Duinker performed with the National Youth Choir of Canada for three tours, spent eight years in the professional core of the Choir of the Church of St. Andrew and St. Paul, and has worked with Montreal-based professional choirs Viva Voce and Voces Boreales, known for their specializations in early and contemporary music, respectively. In 2013 he began collaborating with Peter Schubert on Renaissance vocal improvisation, which led to performances hosted by the Fondazione Cini (Venice, 2013), McGill University’s Research Alive Series (2014), and the Music Encoding Initiative (Montreal, 2016). Duinker also composes and arranges works for choir, having been performed by the Canadian Chamber Choir, Hamilton Children’s Choir, Windsor Classic Chorale, and the choirs of Dalhousie University, University of British Columbia, and Trinity Western University.

Teaching

Duinker’s teaching experience ranges from one-on-one lessons in repertoire interpretation to large lectures delivered to over 200 students. He has taught courses at McGill University and the University in Toronto in music theory and analysis, music appreciation, musicianship, and research and writing techniques. In 2019 he co-designed and co-taught (with Claire McLeish) a course on hip-hop music and culture, which quickly became one of McGill’s most in-demand arts electives and received an honorable mention for the 2021 Award for Diversity in Course Design sponsored by the Society for Music Theory. In 2019 he received the McGill Schulich Teaching Award on his second nomination. This award recognizes excellence in teaching as judged by students in the Schulich School of Music.

Duinker has given guest lectures and participated in research roundtables at the University of Toronto, Colorado University Boulder, University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (Glasgow) and the Royal College of Music (Stockholm). He delivers workshops on a wide range of topics, including writing techniques, research methodologies, artistic project management and grant writing, and developing artistic collaborations. Duinker co-chairs the ACTOR Partnership’s Training and Mentoring Committee, which oversees a one-on-one career mentoring program, organizes workshops for students and emerging professionals, and creates student networking and collaboration opportunities. Duinker co-organized ACTOR’s Summer School on Timbre and Orchestration at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece) in summer 2023. This event, the first of its kind, convened more than 50 students from around the world for a series of tutorials, workshops, and discussions on the significance of timbre and orchestration in a wide range of research idioms, including music theory, musicology, composition, performance, signal processing, acoustics, and computation.