Editor’s Note

Computer Music Journal’s 40th anniversary is only one reminder of the maturation of the field of computer music. As noted in these pages earlier this year, 2016 brought to a close the lives of two august members of the Journal’s editorial advisory board. The renowned composer and conductor Pierre Boulez, who championed computer music in France by establishing the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM), passed away in January at age 90. Within three weeks, the noted artificial intelligence researcher and MIT professor Marvin Minsky had died at age 88. Their passage into the pages of history echoes that of other eminent figures who have graced our board with their presence, such as Iannis Xenakis and Max Mathews.

If there is a silver lining to these somber clouds, it is that the presence of only three remaining members of our editorial advisory board has spurred us to expand the board not only in numbers but in breadth of topical expertise. John Chowning, F. Richard Moore, and Jean-Claude Risset—all of them distinguished pioneers in our field who have served on the board for many years—are now joined by nine new members. We are delighted to welcome to the board Natasha Barrett, Jean-Baptiste Barrière, Elaine Chew, Nick Collins, Roger Dannenberg, George Lewis, Miller Puckette, Carla Scaletti, and Marcelo Wanderley. These experts bring with them a deep knowledge of many aspects of computer music, including acousmatic composition, algorithmic composition, computational music analysis, improvisation, interactive systems, live coding, machine musicianship, multimedia, music information retrieval, music representation, music software environments, pedagogy, performance interfaces, programming languages, signal processing, sound synthesis, and spatialization. The Journal’s editorial staff thank the new board members for agreeing to serve the computer music community in this manner. We look forward to benefitting from the board’s collective wisdom in the coming years, as new generations of computer music practitioners and researchers continue to advance the field that their elders established.