Musical Experiences for the 21st Century

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.

Please subscribe to this blog, join our Facebook page or follow @OperaFuture on Twitter for updates. Send inquiries to junekino@media.mit.edu

January 27 – Tod Machover speaking at ECHO in Hamburg

This week, the European Concert Hall Organization (ECHO) is convening its seminar on music education, The Art of Music Education Volume III, Hamburg 25-27 January 2012. Tod Machover will be addressing the gathering on Friday, January 27, to speak about “New technologies for audience engagement.” In addition to reviewing past projects (“Brain Opera” and “Toy Symphony” among others), he’ll be introducing some exciting new collaborations with major symphony orchestras. If you’re attending, let us know what you think!

And check out the Elbphiharmonie hall going up in Hamburg (at right). Pretty mind-blowing! Tod is handy with his iPhone camera. We hope he sends back some photos.

Los Angeles Times on Tod Machover’s vision for personalized music

Los Angeles Times music critic Mark Swed made the 90-minute drive up to Santa Barbara last week to attend Tod Machover’s talk on ”Music, Mind and Health: Diagnosis, Treatment, and Well-being through Active Sound,” one of four lectures he gave recently at the university’s Sage Center for the Study of the Mind. In today’s issue, Swed reflects on the concept of music as therapy and a future in which each of us could have music that is tailored to our individual psyches. Tod’s new CD “…but not simpler…” gets a nice mention too!

Here’s an excerpt:

“Machover, an intriguing futurologist as well as an inventive composer, runs the departments in hyper-instruments (acoustical instruments given spiffy electronic features) and opera of the future at MIT‘s ultra-high-tech Media Lab…Music, Machover said, touches on just about every aspect of cognition. There are theories that music exists to exercise the mind and to help coordinate its separate functions. Music lovers intuitively know what researchers have verified, that music modulates our moods, helps us move, stimulates our language skills, strengthens our memories and can wondrously bring about emotional responses without their bothersome consequences…

“In an inspiring feedback loop, Machover and his MIT minions, which include some of the nation’s most forward-looking graduate students, are applying their musical gadgets to therapy. The process of making remarkable restorative advances is changing how they think about and make music. And that could affect how the rest of us might think about and make music in the not-so-distant future.”

Read the full article here: Musical therapy is making breakthroughs

Dan Ellsey and Tod Machover (credit MIT Media Lab)

Technology Review: Opera, Remixed

Sound check Ben Bloomberg, '11 works in the “engine room” in Monte Carlo, entering coördinates for speakers used in Death and the Powers. Credit: Peter Torpey

The M.I.T. Media Lab attracts people whose quirky passions and eclectic skill make them misfits in traditional academic departments. Founding director Nicholas Negroponte likes to call the lab a salon de refusés, a roomful of rejects. One such refusé was Ben Bloomberg, an undergraduate who loves pop music and entertainment technology. In the current issue of Technology Review, Ben tells an engaging story of how he found himself at the epicenter of 21st century opera:

I’m sitting in the cavernous Harris Theater in Chicago when an older man with a beard steps up to a microphone. “This project is something that will be remembered,” he says. “Ten or 100 years from now the history books will list this as the turning point, a great shift for the world of opera…”

Read the rest at “Opera, Remixed: My UROP in the Opera of the Future lab”

Death and the Powers in Chicago’s Top 10

This is a lovely holiday surprise!! Chicago Classical Review named Death and the Powers among The Top 10 Performances of 2011. The review states: ”Tod Machover’s envelope-pushing Death and the Powers was the undisputed opera highlight of the year in Chicago.” That’s humbling considering the vibrant, outstanding opera scene for which the Windy City has long been known. Read the rest of the article.

Photo by Jonathan Williams.

Terry Riley and Gamelan Galak Tika @MIT

Tod Machover posted on his Facebook page: “Composing legend Terry Riley finished a week-long residency at MIT by giving a concert on Thursday evening in collaboration with MIT’s gamelan ensemble. A wacky, wonderful California-infused twist on minimalism, with repeated figures (often in the left hand), delirious and quirky melodies, and soulful jabs from clarinet, processed guitar, or clanging gamelan. Loose, flowing and hallucinogenic – a little went a long way, but I was smiling through most of it and glad to be there.”

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Ice Cube Celebrates the Eames

Via Tod Machover’s weekly favorites list, here’s a fabulous YouTube by rap artist Ice Cube talking about the city of Angels. A plain-spoken, moving tribute to the design philosophy of Charles and Ray Eames. He lets loose gems like “They was doin’ mash-ups before mash-ups ever existed.”

Tod Machover at TEDxMunich (video)

This talk occurred earlier this year and just showed up on YouTube. It provides an excellent overview of the work by Tod Machover’s Hyperinstruments and Opera of the Future groups at the MIT Media Lab. Speaking from the Media Lab to the Munich audience via a video conferencing system, Tod and his students demonstrate the technologies and their applications to musical performances, composition, health and creative collaborations.

Tod Machover meets a musical hero

Never a dull moment in Tod Machover’s life! Last week, Gary Grice aka GZA/The Genius, a founding member of rap supergroup the Wu-Tang Clan, paid Tod a visit at the Media Lab. Turns out that GZA is a science/tech groupie! Two days later, Tod was visiting the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. There, he had a chance encounter with one of his musical heroes.

Here’s what happened according to Tod’s Facebook page: “Was in Toronto today and had my picture taken with Glenn Gould outside the Canadian Broadcasting HQs named after him. Unfortunately he was a bit less animated than GZA had been:) Actually, Gould was one hero of mine who I never did get to meet in person. But today I did purchase the complete Gould TV broadcasts on the CBC, just out on DVD and on sale today at the CBC shop. Guess they’ll have to do…..”

Everything you need to know about “…but not simpler…”

We’ve compiled this one-stop-shop for performing organizations interested in Tod Machover’s music on “…but not simpler…” (Bridge Records 2011).

This collection of Tod Machover’s music focuses on chamber and orchestral music composed during the last decade, both with and without electronic enhancement. Machover’s music is a fascinating blend of expressive and lyrical melody combined with a sophisticated ear for textural complexity. The resulting music is always a treat for the ears- colorful, vibrant, and rhythmically propulsive. The largest composition on this disc is the piano concerto Jeux Deux, scored for large orchestra (the work was commissioned and first performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra), with the soloist performing on a “hyperpiano”- a concert grand piano which interacts with sensors and computer programs in order to expand its technical possibilities. Machover produces cutting-edge music with a heart!

The tracklist:

• Sparkler (2001) for orchestra and live electronics, Odense Symphony Orchestra, Paul Mann, conductor
• Interlude 1 (2006; rev. 2011) – “After Bach”
• Hyper-Dim-Sums (2004) for string quartet, iO Quartet
• Interlude 2 (2011) – “After Byrd”
• …but not simpler… (2005) for string quartet, iO Quartet
• Jeux Deux (2005) for hyperpiano and orchestra, Michael Chertock, hyperpiano, Odense Symphony Orchestra, Paul Mann, conductor

Reading:

Booklet notes by Richard Dyer, former chief music critic for the Boston Globe.

Listening:

To request an MP3 please email junekino@media.mit.edu for a download code. The CD is available for purchase from Bridge Records and Amazon.com.

Scores:

• ‘Sparkler’ (Boosey & Hawkes 2001)
• ‘Jeux Deux’ (Boosey & Hawkes 2005)
• But Not Simpler (Boosey & Hawkes 2005)
• 3 Hyper Dim-Sums (Boosey & Hawkes 2004)

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”.

Additional video of live performances, audio excepts, photos, composer’s remarks and links are available at Tod Machover’s official website.

Tod Machover’s UC Santa Barbara series

Aerial view of Santa Barbara

This Thursday, December 8, Tod Machover will launch a four-lecture seminar series at the University of California Santa Barbara, where he is Distinguished Fellow at the SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind. Full details of the talks are now available here.

Here’s the schedule:

Dec 8, 2011. Hyperinstruments: From Yo-Yo Ma to Guitar Hero and Beyond

Dec 12, 2011. Everyone’s A Composer: Hyperscore, Personal Opera, and a New Musical Ecology, with live performance of 3 Hyper-Dim-Sums

Jan 11, 2012. Music, Mind and Health: Diagnosis, Treatment, and Well-being through Active Sound

Jan 18, 2012. Opera for Robots and People Too: An Unexpectedly Experimental Medium