In case you are wondering why Tod didn’t emerge from his barn-studio for the past two months, he was busy orchestrating “A Toronto Symphony.” In this new SoundNotion interview, Tod explains his work process, along with sundry other hot topics from the Media Lab and Opera of the Future. (The interview was recorded over Skype, and you can see bits of the barn in the background.)
A symphony orchestra work has a whole lot of parts! Just to give you an idea, here’s the list of instruments (not including strings) for the piece:
Music and media are two worlds that are evolving technologically at a head-spinning pace today. How is technology helping or hindering? How has technology itself become the subject for musical and media investigation? And if you want to get really meta, how is technology altering the very profession of being a media commentator about the impact of technology on music and media?
These are the fun and weighty topics that will be unpackaged this Thursday and Friday at the University of Missouri’s “Music and New Media at the Crossroads,”a festival presented jointly by the School of Music and School of Journalism. Tod Machover will deliver the keynote and join cellist Matt Haimovitz in a panel discussion. “Music critics Tim Page (editor of the definitive volume of Glenn Gould’s writings) and Greg Sandow (Juilliard professor and inveterate blogger) will also be there, so it should be a fun event,” says Tod.
Matt will perform a concert Thursday evening that includes works by Tod (“Dadaji in Paradise”, “Vinyl Cello” and “Flora”). The Grammy-winning quartet, eighth blackbird, will give a concert on Friday night.
An article about the festival in the Columbia Daily Tribune opines:
Wherever one is situated on the digital spectrum, this is a dialogue that musicians — and music lovers — cannot ignore or write off as a distraction. The integration of new technologies has always been a necessary consideration for musicians, even at the level of learning how to play and write for newly fashioned instruments, said Jonathan Kuuskoski, director of entrepreneurship and community programs at the School of Music. He pointed to Bach’s initial rejection of the fortepiano as an example of great artists wrestling with changing norms.
“It’s always been part of the discussion, so to think that stops or to take a stance and say new media is not part of this would probably be a mistake,” he said.
This weekend, Tod will join 50 other presenters (from Robert Wilson to Atom Egoyan to Lang Lang!) at the University of Toronto’s Convocation Hall for an extraordinary gathering of “Dreamers Renegades Visionaries” to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the iconoclastic pianist and boundary breaker’s birth. Check out this terrific article about the event in Whole Note (“Spinning Gould – 30 years after”).
Tod is scheduled to speak and perform at 5pm on Saturday, the 22nd. He posted this photo on Facebook this morning and gave a hint about what he’ll be presenting:
Here is my cello resting this morning in our barn outside of Boston, preparing to travel to Toronto tomorrow for the big Gould event. I’ll be playing the solo cello (something I don’t do often these days, but am happy to do to pay homage to Gould) to “shed a light” on – and make connections between – shards of music hidden in hundreds of sound images sent from Toronto as part of my A Toronto Symphony project …I promise it will be unusual:)
Listen to this teaser from Tod’s montage of sounds of Toronto -
Composer Tod Machover swung through Edinburgh this past weekend to meet with Festival organizers. Looks like he also found time to explore the city. Here are some photos from Tod’s Facebook album, with his comments! Click on the photos to enlarge.
Classic shot of Edinburgh Castle hovering over Princes Gardens. Nothing quite like it.
Yup, they really do play bagpipes over here…and this guy played quite well. Two women drove up with their big black dogs, and maneouvered for 15 minutes or so so that the dogs would stay put so she (and I:) could snap this shot.
Lobby sitting area in the very nice Edinburgh hotel where I am staying. Pure Georgian outside, pure “mod” inside.
Gorgeous Usher Hall where I attended a concert last evening by the RSNO playing Ives, Feldman and Walton. Felt fulfilled after the Ives and Feldman (and exhausted with jetlag) so left at intermission.
Characters of all sorts prowl around Edinburgh at night, including this sort-of Dracula with a sort-of medieval-type hangman guy. Snapped their picture; didn’t take their tour.
From years ago, I remember the mediaeval “skyscrapers” in Edinburgh. The town was so dense and crowded – and one apparently had to pay a tax to go past the city walls – that buildings were very vertical and also deep. Also interestingly, different classes and métiers mixed in the same buildings. Tell that to Mitt Romney!!!
Georgian building in Edinburgh turned into…god knows what?!?!?
Here’s the unfinished Parthenon on Calton Hill, high above Edinburgh.
Arthur’s Seat, the amazing land formation in the center of Edinburgh, right at the end of the Royal Mile and next to Holyrood Palace. My mom and I went up there for a picnic when we were here a VERY long time ago. My dad was giving a talk at a big computer graphics conference in the center of the city.
One of the best ideas I’ve seen in a while: a pop-up motel/hotel installed in Edinburgh for the Festival. The UK organization apparently has a few of these which they rotate to different festival sites. Nice place to visit; wouldn’t want to live there:)
Edinburgh’s Royal Mile on a Sunday afternoon.
Home of John Knox, one of Scotland’s great Protestant reformers.
This guy played the musical saw very very well. Liked his hat too.
He sure LOOKED like Mel Gibson but he has a sword so I was afraid to ask:)
The Edinburgh International Festival has its its offices – called The Hub – in this church on the Royal Mile.
Ramsay Gardens, a stone’s throw from Edinburgh Castle, and a quiet, beautiful oasis. This is where I’d want to live in Edinburgh…..
One of Edinburgh’s many astonishing juxtapositions.
These mediaeval buildings are tall tall tall.
I guess Princes Gardens has become the official “mobile zone” for Edinburgh:)
Listening to the brief excerpts from Skellig the other day brought back a deluge of memories about its wonderful run at the Sage Gateshead in 2008. Few people have heard the opera because it has not yet been recorded. We thought you might enjoy this glimpse from the first act. Matthew Long sings the role of Michael, and Merrin Layzan is Mina. The orchestra is the Northern Sinfonia under the baton of Garry Walker.
Synopsis
He was filthy and pale and dried out and I thought he was dead. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I’d soon begin to see the truth about him, that there’d never been another creature like him in the world.
Michael and his family have moved house. It was going to be wonderful. They were due to arrive in time for the spring. But everything’s dark, the place is a wreck, the garden’s a wilderness. And now Michael’s sister is dangerously ill, his parents are frantic and Doctor Death has come to call. Michael feels helpless.
Then he steps into the crumbling garage…
What is this thing beneath the spiders’ webs and dead flies?
A human being, or a strange kind of beast never seen before?
The only person Michael can confide in is Mina. Together, they bring the creature into the light, and Michael’s world changes forever…
One of the core ideas in Hyperscore, the composing software developed by Tod Machover’s team at the M.I.T. Media Lab, is that music is built from “motifs” – small melodies and rhythm patterns – which are assembled into larger musical structures. In this video, Tod coaches a groups of children in Armenia and the U.S. as they work together to create a new piece of music. The kids created a variety of motifs, humming them or wielding the mouse to draw them in Hyperscore. Here we see them start to construct a composition which eventually will be performed by the Armenian Philharmonic Orchestra at a gala celebration. (For more information, read From the U.S. to Armenia, Kids Build a Musical Bridge.)
The “A Toronto Symphony” project is receiving some nice media attention! The CBC’s popular morning radio program, Metro Morning, aired an interview with composer and project mastermind Tod Machover on the morning of June 14. Click here to listen.
The Toronto Star has invited its readers to send in their “sounds of Toronto” and plans to report on the results. The Toronto Standard writes:
A preliminary experiment with some TSO musicians has already yielded unexpected results. Machover sent the eight musicians some chords and they responded with their own musical ideas. “Honestly I can tell you I didn’t expect the kind of craziness, I didn’t expect it to be as inventive,” said Machover. “Once I got the material I had to kind of change what I was going to do, so I really hope that I’m surprised a lot.” The resulting composition, performed at the official launch at the ideacity conference, built from a scattered, wandering mélange of textures into a series of playful melodies and phases with each instrument taking brief solos. It’s an unexpected, yet pleasing tune that evokes the diverse bustle of a metropolis.
And here’s a terrific, thoughtful blog post by John Terauds for Musical Toronto. We love this quote:
Machover’s Ideacity audience had a chance to hear the results, which may or may not be part of the much, much larger finished work. But along the way, the composer was able to prove to himself, as well as key witnesses, that weaving other people’s ideas into a meaningful whole is possible.
Do you have questions or want to learn how to participate? Visit the A Toronto Symphony blog to get involved!
Composer Tod Machover’s project with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, “A Toronto Symphony: Concerto for Composer and City”, was officially launched today at the ideacity conference 2012. In the trailer video above, Tod explains that the composition will consist of “Me, You and (H)ours” – music based on what he sends out to the public, music inspired by what the public sends to him, and music that he and the public will create together.
The official project blog invites the citizens of Toronto to contribute ideas, sounds, music and discussion. In the first of a series of “tasks”, Tod invites people to send unique and special sounds that are quintessentially Torontonian. People can contribute their sounds of Toronto by text, image, or audio uploads to YouTube and Soundcloud, and share them over the official project blog or Facebook page. If you were to pick a sound that was unique to your city, what would it be?
The popular technology blog Gizomodo sent an intrepid reporter to try out the enhanced Sleep No More experience during its beta test run. The result is this rich description of getting lost inside the creepy McKittrick Hotel. Donning a mask that on occasion transmits urgent, mysterious messages to her, she slowly realizes that the set is filled with hidden, interactive zones connecting her to an unseen online companion. This report much more accurately conveys the nature of this immersive theater experience than did the New York Times article last week in which the reporter mostly kvetched about how painful it was to wear the mask (which unfortunately was not designed to be worn over eyeglasses).
We stumbled across another excellent review of Tod Machover’s latest CD “…but not simpler…” on AllMusic.com. They totally get what the music is about:
…Machover never loses sight of the emotional side of music that engages the listener naturally, viscerally…For anyone who is tempted to dismiss all modern music as “strange” or inaccessible, this album will prove him or her wrong. Machover seems to have struck the right balance between conceptual art and music at its purest level of feeling.
"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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