Tod Machover’s new opera Death and the Powers had its U.S. premiere in Boston and Chicago this spring, where it was warmly received by audiences and reviewers. Click on tabs above for a wealth of information about the background, personalities, music and media coverage (“buzz”). We would like to thank all who were involved for their support. It has been amazing. We will continue to update you on the progress of this and other projects from the Opera of the Future group. We will also be posting about many of Tod’s past operas and other work, which have not been readily available to listeners.
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A one-stop-shop for performing organizations interested in Tod Machover’s “Sparkler”, a work for orchestra and electronics.
“Machover’s controlled venturesomeness in terms of rhythm, tempo, and dynamics makes the music so scintillating that “Fireworks” would have been a likelier title for this work…” - Phil Muse
“Sparkler (2007) sparkles. There’s a wealth of color-drenched details: virtuosic wind passages juxtaposed with high string sonorities and untuned metallic percussion…”
- Andrew Violette in New Music Connoisseur
LISTEN – Excerpts
To request a CD or MP3 of full tracks please email junekino@media.mit.edu for a download code. The CD is available for purchase from Bridge Records and Amazon.com.
“Sparkler” is scored for a large orchestra with standard complement of strings and brass, augmented winds (flutes and alto flute; oboes; clarinets in B-flat and E-flat and bass clarinet; oboes; English horn; bassoons and contrabassoon) and large percussion battery of pitched and unpitched instruments – vibraphone, celeste, xylophone, glockenspiel, marimba,
maracas, thunder sheet, glass wind chimes, temple bells, tamtams, tomtoms, suspended cymbals, low gong, timbales, temple blocks, roto-toms, bass drum, snare drum, and tympani. Continue reading
The delightful folks from Germany’s musikFabrik dropped by the MIT Media Lab yesterday for a chat with Tod Machover and a chance to see some of the music technology developed there. The Cologne-based ensemble was in town to rehearse for tomorrow night’s concert at Harvard’s Paine Hall, where they will perform six new works by the Harvard New Music Group. They will then dash off to Troy, NY, to perform a different program on Sunday night at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s spectacular EMPAC hall. Why not spend the day to enjoy the Berkshire’s, explore the 19th-century small town charms of Troy, followed by a bracing dose of 21st-century music and architecture?
Some music enthusiast ripped this footage from an episode of Scientific American Frontiers (around 2002) and posted it on YouTube. Host Alan Alda narrates (and sings!), while violinist Joshua Bell jams on a hyperviolin developed for Tod Machover’s Toy Symphony project. Enjoy!
A one-stop-shop for performing organizations interested in Tod Machover’s “Jeux Deux”, a work for orchestra, Yamaha Disklavier and electronics.
Machover utilizes his “hyperpiano” concept, in which the grand piano, played with consummate sensitivity by Paul Chertock, interacts with the Yamaha Disklavier in a way that augments, transforms and splinters the music, sometimes releasing a volley of pre-composed notes in greater profusion and rapidity than a live pianist could possibly play them. The result is an absolutely stunning experience for performer and listener alike.
- Phil Muse
LISTEN – Excerpts
To request a CD or MP3 of full tracks please email junekino@media.mit.edu for a download code. The CD is available for purchase from Bridge Records and Amazon.com.
Jeux Deux (excerpt 1)
Jeux Deux (excerpt 2)
Jeux Deux (excerpt 3)
Additional video of live performances, audio excepts, photos, composer’s remarks and links are available at Tod Machover’s official website.
VIDEO
The CD was partially funded through Kickstarter. The project video provides some fun background information, excerpts and documentary footage of the world premiere performance of ‘Jeux Deux”.
Joyce DiDonato and Scott Hendricks in “Resurrection”
Listen up! The Classical Discoveries radio program on WPRB 103.3FM (Princeton, NJ) is airing Tod Machover’s opera “Resurrection” in full this Sunday, May 6, from 6:00-10:00AM (the music begins at 7:00AM). The broadcast will be available for download as an MP3 for two weeks. Host and producer Marvin Rosen “celebrates new music and living composers” on his show, which has been on the air since May 1997.
Resurrection, based on Leo Tolstoy’s final novel, was commissioned by the Houston Grand Opera, where it had its world premiere in 1999. The central role of Katerina Maslova went to the fresh-faced mezzo soprano Joyce DiDonato, who has since soared to the top ranks of international opera. In this live performance recording, DiDonato is featured alongside baritone Scott Hendricks (Prince Nekhlyudov), tenor Raymond Very (Peter Simonson) and the superb Houston Grand Opera orchestra and chorus under the baton of Patrick Summers. The recording was edited and re-mixed by Machover.
From a review by Opera News Online:
“…sonics, instrumental clarity and theatrical impact are all at a very high level. Machover excels at using his electro-acoustic orchestral texture to depict internal and external states of disintegration, of which there are many in the story…Most importantly, the characters spring credibly to life as fully-fleshed humans whose complex evolutions we witness…Machover emerges as a composer with a mode of musical story-telling that is powerfully immediate, a worthy goal for any contemporary opera.
Excerpt from the Overture to “Resurrection”
“Too Late” at the end of Act 1, sung by Joyce DiDonato
The current issue of the Swedish design journal LOFT carries a lavishly illustrated interview with composer Tod Machover. The interview focuses on the creative process and covers a lot of ground, from early childhood experiences with music to the ongoing project to compose a Concerto for Composer and City that calls upon the residents of Toronto to participate actively.
The other thing which I always tell my students, because I have learned this myself from experience, is that a good teacher does not necessarily provide you with a single strategy or approach to solving problems creatively. Probably the best composition teacher I ever had – the one whose thoughts still resonate in my own mind fairly frequently – is the one who had the least methodology or underlying theory to his commentary. In fact, I had to learn how to ask him questions to understand the connecting theories behind his reactions. But he also told me to look with a fresh eye and ear at each new problem, and to have multiple strategies at hand to address any situation that came up. It is this flexibility and repertoire of complementary techniques that allows us to find the most fruitful path, to steer around ruts, and to proceed whenever we do get stuck. In this way, each of us needs to develop a very good intuition about what methodology is going to work for you, right now – this year, this week, this day, this hour.
A one-stop-shop for performing organizations interested in Tod Machover’s “Hyper Dim Sums”, short works for string quartet
“Machover’s exquisite attention to line and form is most evident in the trio of splendid short works for string quartet”
- Phil Muse
LISTEN – Excerpts
To request a CD or MP3 of full tracks please email junekino@media.mit.edu for a download code. The CD is available for purchase from Bridge Records and Amazon.com.
NOTES (From Booklet notes by Richard Dyer, former chief music critic for the Boston Globe.)
Between 2001 and 2008 the Ying Quartet spent part of each season as Blodgett Artists in Residence at Harvard University. In 2003 the quartet – then still in its original configuration of four siblings from Winetka, Illinois (Timothy and Janet Ying, violins, Philip Ying, viola, and David Ying, cello) – contacted Machover and asked him to write a string quartet as part of LifeMusic, a series they created that has grown to embrace more than a dozen commissions for new works that reflect life in America today.
Machover ultimately responded in 2005 when he created a major string quartet which he entitled “. . . but not simpler.’’ But before Machover embarked on that piece, he involved the Ying Quartet in a project with the La Jolla Music Society in California which sponsored a composition competition in the San Diego area using Hyperscore. As part of the mentoring process for all the amateur composers, Machover created three short pieces for string quartet using Hyperscore himself, Hyper-Dim-Sums.
Machover admits with a laugh that Beethoven himself could not have created his string quartets using Hyperscore; the computer program makes it easier to explore and experiment than to realize pre-imagined sounds and structures, but it is certainly possible to create music of sufficient quality and density to interest performers and an audience.
The titles of these tasty little appetizers are descriptive and selfexplanatory – “Glade,’’ “Winding Line,’’ and “Punchy.’’ In fact, on the Hyperscore screen for “Winding Line’’ you can see the sinuous twists and turns of a line that looks like a country highway on a map– the meter in “Winding Line,’’ for example, is constantly changing, and the harmonies are often surprisingly pungent. (One of the many interesting aspects of the Hyperscore workshops with children is that they are completely unfazed by dissonance – in fact they seem to prefer it.)
A one-stop-shop for performing organizations interested in Tod Machover’s “…but not simpler”, a work for string quartet
“Mr. Machover’s new quartet, “… but not simpler …,” is a vigorous, exciting study in speediness, full of tremolando figures, racing lines and iridescent passages..” - The New York Times
“This extended work is full of complex and technically demanding passages for the strings but with some sublimely serene passages. This is a clearly difficult work to perform and challenging to listen to but with ample rewards.” - Daniel Coombs in Audiophile Audition
LISTEN – Excerpts
To request a CD or MP3 of full tracks please email junekino@media.mit.edu for a download code. The CD is available for purchase from Bridge Records and Amazon.com.
NOTES (From Booklet notes by Richard Dyer, former chief music critic for the Boston Globe.)
“This is a 15-minute string quartet designed to be played without electronics – the Yings requested a piece they could tour easily – but some performances have used electronics to help “spatialize’’ the music, that is, to create more separation between and among the instruments and highlighting the independence and interdependence of their individual voices.
Machover chose his title from a famous observation by Albert Einstein, “One should always make things as simple as possible, but not simpler.’’ It was Machover’s goal, he has written, to “represent the struggle to come to terms with the increasing complexity, fragmentation, and speed of today’s world, and of my life in particular.’’ So the piece, in his words, “dramatizes the search for calm and coherence in the midst of present-day complexity and diversity, and uses the togetherness or divergence of the four quartet players as a main source of tension and movement.’’
The quartet opens and closes with high indistinct sonorities. The opening marking is “swiftly mysterious”; by the end of the quartet the sonorities have become “gentle noise only, very pure and stable’’ that very slowly fades to nothing. “Calm of mind, all passion spent,’’ one might say, borrowing the words of Milton.
The main part of the quartet falls into three sections. The first is “diverse but not discrete’’; Machover marks the pensive second section “lyrical but cool,’’ and it grows into a section marked “swift and swelling.’’ After a moment of repose, the music arrives at the frantic finale, marked “as fast as possible’’- a favorite demand of Schumann’s.
Several strategies, or rather several ideas, take different forms in the different movements. The four players are almost never doing the same thing at the time – instead, each of them is going his own way (“diverse’’) although there are shifting patterns of alliances, and each individual way is somehow connected to the others, if only through opposition (“not discrete”). If someone is playing legato, someone else is simultaneously playing pizzicato; if someone’s bow is one position on the strings, the others take contrasting positions. A rocking gesture, and, even more, a frequent series of repeated notes, suggest some kind of treadmill to which there are various musical and human responses (anger, panic, resignation). But these same gestures also generate melody; something beautiful arises amid violence, but too often we are too frantically involved in our own concerns to hear what is really there; order is always threatened by chaos.”
Last week’s experiment at the MIT Media Lab tested out a new system to allow the listening public to express musical preferences to a pianist who responded in real time. Tae Kim’s tour de force of improvisation drew a highly engaged crowd both at the Media Lab and online, as well as some media attention. This story just appeared in New Scientist and describes the scene:
Kim, a graduate of the New England Conservatory, had been playing the piano in the MIT Media Lab’s “Opera of the Future” lab for three and a half hours at the lab’s spring meeting earlier this week. But there was no sheet music on the music stand. Instead, Kim watched colourful bubbles on an iPad that displayed what people watching along online wanted to hear.
The piece was “an experiment in collaborative improvisation”, says composer and lab director Tod Machover. People at home could listen to ten clips of music from Bach to the Beatles and rate their preferences. If listeners said, “This is nice, but I’d like a little more Radiohead and a little less Schubert,” Kim had to respond by improvising in real time.
The event was designed to test a new tool and approach to engage Toronto residents in contributing musical ideas to our current project, ”A Toronto Symphony: Concerto for Composer and City.” Visit the site for more information and to SIGN UP!!
It’s wonderful what young people can achieve if just given the tools, encouragement and respect. Back on February 25, 2012, two of Armenia’s elite musical ensembles dig into new pieces composed entirely by children from Armenia and the United States. The children used Hyperscore software developed by the MIT Media Lab’s Opera of the Future group. The concert, “A-to-A: A World in Harmony,” featured the Armenian Philharmonic Orchestra and DOGMA, one of the country’s most popular rock bands. The event was streamed live. Here’s the press release that describes the background of the event. The live stream was recorded and is now available for your viewing pleasure:
"Mr. Machover's new quartet, "... but not simpler ...," is a vigorous, exciting study in speediness, full of tremolando figures, racing lines and iridescent passages.."
- The New York Times
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