by Tod Machover Tomorrow is Pierre Boulez's 90th birthday. There is an excellent article today in Zurich's Tages-Anzeiger; a must-read if you speak German. It talks eloquently about Boulez's FOUR careers: composer, director (of IRCAM), conductor, and teacher/mentor. The article includes an excellent interview about Boulez with Michael Haefliger, director of the LUCERNE FESTIVAL with …
Light in Lucerne (photos)
Tod Machover is in Lucerne this week, working with musicians on a new work to premiere this summer at the Lucerne Festival. He seems very taken by the quality of light in the city. From Tod's Facebook: Surprising and intense light everywhere in Lucerne, where we are in a fun work week in preparation for …
Lucerne Festival: Fasnacht Adventure
Check out Tod Machover's post on the official Symphony for Lucerne blog about his recent Fasnacht adventure, during the annual carnival festival that overtakes the usually calm Swiss city. Here's an excerpt. Read the entire breathtaking story here. I had been prepared for the spectacle and the wild masks, but was totally blown away by the …
Sneak peak at Symphony in D
Here's a fun piece on Detroit's WDIV TV on #symphonyind. Hear a bass trombone sound like a car's accelerator, hear Henry Ford's first engine, and hear the TV announcer speculate on what the sound of a DRIVER might be on landing in one of Detroit's ubiquitous potholes! Watch the video here. How you can collaborate …
Plunging into “Fensadense”
From Tod Machover's Facebook page: Straight off the plane yesterday from Dubai into an intensive rehearsal at the LUCERNE FESTIVAL for our new FENSADENSE project. What a pleasure to explore the relationships of improvisation-to-composition and acoustics-to-electronics with 10 amazing young musicians from around the world. Bach is already being transmuted into something new and surprising, …
Detroit’s “Symphony in D” app now available
From Click On Detroit The Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO), in partnership with Tod Machover at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, released two free apps that allow citizens of Detroit and metropolitan locals to submit sounds and personalized mixes to the Symphony in D …
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Video: Symphony for Our Times
Here's the full video of the performance of A SYMPHONY FOR OUR TIMES, the closing event at the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 24th. It's a kind of compendium of Tod Machover's City Symphony projects - including glimpses of Toronto, Edinburgh, Perth, Lucerne and Detroit - and it sounds and looks great. Hope …
WGBH Open Studio interview
Interesting interview on WGBH TV's "Open Studio" about the VOCAL VIBRATIONS project, including footage from the Cambridge, Massachusetts, installation open through March 21. The interview is from 6:00-14:40 at http://tinyurl.com/OpenStudioTod, followed by a cool chat with Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues who happens to be a friend, a really lovely guy, and is still touring …
Discovering the sounds of Detroit
From the Knight Blog: A new, collaborative symphony, led by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and Tod Machover of the MIT Media Lab and funded by Knight, is taking shape in the Motor City. Below, Machover, who is gathering sounds from the people of Detroit to shape the piece, writes about his work. A version of this post …
Tod Machover’s Fasnacht adventures
Postings by Tod Machover from Lucerne, Switzerland February 16, 2015. Here's my full Fasnacht costume - provided by friends at the LUCERNE FESTIVAL, as well as the (very loud) scene right outside my hotel window - at 12:30 pm. People told me that this medieval, super-quiet and discrete hotel would become one of the epicenters of Fasnacht...and …
Opera of the Future 