The Music and Media Study Group meeting of 2022 coincided with the quinquennial IMS conference, which took place in August in Athens, Greece. In the multipurpose room of the impressive concert hall building Μέγαρον Μουσικής Αθηνών, MaM hosted its 13^th conference as a hybrid meeting throughout the morning of 23 August. Combining in-person and on-line presentations was the go-to, not only due to time zone differences, but also because Greece was still considered a Covid danger zone according to diverse foreign organizations.

Where MaM normally convenes multiple day, annual conferences, we now opted within the possibilities of the overall IMS conference for a smaller roundtable session, discussing the topic of Music in Comedy Cinema. This time, as well, no international open call for papers was published, but all invited speakers are involved in the upcoming Palgrave Handbook of Music in Comedy Cinema, edited by Emilio Audissino and Emile Wennekes.

Dr. Chloé Huvet (Université d’Évry Paris-Saclay, France) opened the panel with her live talk ‘From E.T. to Tintin: John Williams’ Humorous Touches in Non-Comedy Films’. Dr. Emilio Audissino (Linnaeus University, Sweden) continued on the Williams theme with his on-line presentation ‘John Williams, from Comic to Humour: The pre-Star Wars Period’. Next up was Dr. Michael Baumgartner (Cleveland State University, Cleveland, USA) who gave an on-line, and partly pre-recorded presentation entitled ‘Self-Reflexive Music and the Comic Incongruity in the Golden Age of French Comedies’. Prof. Emile Wennekes (Utrecht University, The Netherlands) then brought the overarching topic ‘(Under)scoring Laughs: Theoretical ingredients for a Handbook Introduction’ to the table, live from the Athens Concert Hall. Prof. James Deaville (Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada) closed the line-up of Handbook contributors with the online presentation ‘Taking Mancini’s Comedy Scores Seriously’.

The papers were amply discussed, after which the round table meeting was closed by unveiling location and topic of the 2023 annual MaM meeting.

MaM’s 14^th annual conference will be hosted by Université d’Évry Paris-Saclay, and will take place in Paris (France) on 19-21 June, 2023. The topic will be Music and Sound in Francophone Audiovisual Media.

Prof. dr. Emile Wennekes, chair of the Study Group MaM