The Dalai Lama visited M.I.T. earlier this week to give a series of talks hosted by the Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values. The Opera of the Future group in collaboration with Tenzin Priyadarshi, MIT's Buddhist Chaplain and Director of the Dalai Lama Center at MIT, and the Blue Heron vocal ensemble, produced a …
Music + Media Mash-up!!
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 …
From Glenn Gould to Hip Hop (photos)
Tod's weekend in Toronto. Photos from Tod Machover's Facebook. Click on image to see full size.
Celebrating the spirit of Glenn Gould
Reposted from A Toronto Symphony 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 …
Update: A Toronto Symphony
In mid-June, Tod officially launched his project with the Toronto Symphony at the ideacity 2012 conference. On the project blog, Tod explains the ideas behind his "launch music": To officially launch our A Toronto Symphony collaboration, I created a series of chords last month to serve as a kind of “genetic” code for the project, and also …
Listen! Sounds from “Skellig”
Tod's current project, "A Toronto Symphony", is about active, mindful listening to the world around us, in this case the city of Toronto. The composer asks the inhabitants to focus on the sounds that evoke strong feelings, images and memories about their city and their lives, raw sounds that he will transform into music. As …
Anna-Sophie Mutter visits Media Lab!
A fun way to start the week! We spotted this photo on Adrian Anantawan's Facebook: "Two amazing people at the MIT Media Lab! 🙂 — with Tod Machover and Anne-Sophie Mutter." Wonder what they discussed? #EarsBurning!
Hyperscore in Action: A-to-A Project
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 …
Media coverage for A Toronto Symphony
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 …
Toronto: Launch rehearsal
Wow! What an invigorating and wonderful experience to hear Tod and eight musicians from the Toronto Symphony Orchestra get up on the ideacity stage on Thursday and perform brand-new music, created as the cornerstone for the Concerto for Composer and Orchestra. As Tod explained to the ideacity audience, he composed a chord progression one week ago, …
Opera of the Future 