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, …
Musical Experiences for the 21st Century
A Toronto Symphony 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 …
A Toronto Symphony to launch at ideacity 2012
Tod Machover's A Toronto Symphony project will officially launch in Toronto on June 14 at ideacity, billed as "‘Canada’s Premier Meeting of the Minds’...an eclectic gathering of artists, adventurers, authors, cosmologists, doctors, designers, entertainers, filmmakers, inventors, magicians, musicians, scientists and technologists." Joined by musicians from the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Tod will present the overall concept …
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Gizmodo visits Sleep No More NYC
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 …
All Music review of Tod Machover’s CD “…but not simpler…”
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 …
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Project Toronto – Genesis (Interview with Gary Kulesha)
Interview by Jennifer Green, Project Manager for the 2013 New Creation’s Festival A Toronto Symphony project. Every March the Toronto Symphony Orchestra presents the New Creations Festival. Season curator and composer, Tod Machover, will create a new work that will be premiered by the orchestra in Roy Thomson Hall on March 9, 2013. The work will be …
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Punchdrunk on its Media Lab collaboration
"I have just come to the end of two of the most exciting (and longest) weeks of my career," writes Peter Higgin, enrichment director at Punchdrunk. Writing in The Guardian, Higgin describes the culmination of the U.K. theater group's collaboration with our team at the MIT Media Lab to create an online enhancement for the hit New York …
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Opera of the Future at Sleep No More NYC
At last the story can be told! For the past several months, the Opera of the Future team has been cranking away on a top-secret project to create an enhanced version of Sleep No More, the runaway hit theater experience currently playing in New York City. Last week, they beta tested the system with live …
Gramophone Reviews Tod Machover’s latest CD
The venerable Gramophone, which bills itself "The world's unrivalled authority on classical music since 1923," just came out with an excellent review of Tod Machover's most recent CD, "...but not simpler..." The review notes that Machover's technological innovations, such as Hyperinstruments and Hyperorchestra, "have crucial and winning impacts on the expressive possibilities of Machover's music, as can …
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Excavated Gem – Scientific American Frontiers plays with “Toy Symphony”
Some music enthusiast ripped this footage from an episode of Scientific American Frontiers (around 2002) and posted it on YouTube. Host Alan Alda narrates (and sings!), while violinist Joshua Bell jams on a hyperviolin developed for Tod Machover's Toy Symphony project. Enjoy!