Moe Touizrar

Biography

Mohamed (Moe) Touizrar’s research draws on perceptual, phenomenological, and aesthetic facets of experience to understand the depictive capacity of orchestral music. His dissertation, “From Ekphrasis to Apperception: The Sunlight Topic in Music,” examines the role of timbre and form in orchestral depictions of sunrise and sunset through the lens of perception, rhetoric, and memory. In addition to several ongoing interdisciplinary collaborations in both Europe and Canada, Moe is an active member of the multinational project “Analysis, Creation, and Teaching of Orchestration” (ACTOR,) where he helps to develop new theories and methods for the analysis of orchestral music and leads a workgroup on interdisciplinary research methods. Moe is currently co-editing the multidisciplinary Oxford Handbook of Orchestration Studies (OUP, 2025). He has presented his research at a variety of international conferences and workshops, with invitations to several interdisciplinary research centers, including the Swiss Centre for Affective Science (Université de Genève) and the Finnish Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music (University of Jyväskylä).

Moe received his Ph.D. in 2020 from McGill University, where he studied composition with John Rea and music perception and cognition with Stephen McAdams. While at McGill, he lectured undergraduate courses in music theory and music perception/cognition and delivered an innovative graduate seminar in interdisciplinary methodology and collaboration. From 2021 to 2024, Moe held postdoctoral positions in Finland at the University of Jyväskylä and the University of Helsinki. His research has been supported by, among others, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the Kone Foundation, the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music, Media, and Technology (CIRMMT), and the Music Perception and Cognition Lab (MPCL) at McGill University.  His music has been performed in Canada, the USA, and Finland.