Variety, the venerable entertainment trade mag (Variety is in/famous for coining zippy industry lingo), has a story today about composer Tod Machover’s hyperinstruments. In Smart instruments: Musician’s tools play along with you, reporter David S. Cohen writes: “Ever since the invention of electric amplification, there’s been tension in the music world — a perpetual stare-down between acoustic and electric, amplified and unplugged, the immediacy of live performance and the perfectibility of the studio recording. Tod Machover is working on a truce.”
Here’s video footage of Yo yo Ma playing the hypercello in Machover’s “Begin Again Again” (begins around 4:00)
Opera of the Future 