"The story is as old as humanity itself. A man—in this case a successful businessman—grapples with his own mortality and wants desperately to leave a legacy after he dies. But this story has never been told as composer Tod Machover tells it." So begins this excellent article about Death and the Powers, just out in …
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There's an excellent article, "A thoroughly modern opera: Robots enter a new frontier," just out by writer Gregory Lamb in the Christian Science Monitor. Through his interviews with the creative team, Lamb helps to explicate the many layers of meaning in the technological wizardry of Death and the Powers. Lamb writes, "all this technology, some …
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Tod Machover was interviewed today on NPR's Morning Edition. Tod speaks with host Bob Oakes about Music|Machines, an all-day event that will be held tomorrow (February 5, 2011) at the M.I.T. Media Laboratory. The event features lectures and discussions by such electronic music pioneers and thinkers as Max Mathews, Barry Vercoe, Marvin Minsky, Joe Paradiso, …
Message from Tod: "I thought you might enjoy this new interview that just got posted. The editor of the New Vilna Review was at the event I participated in last month with Robert Pinsky and followed up with these questions. I enjoyed this opportunity to talk about my Jewish roots, something that I haven't really …
The distinguished music critic Andrew Porter has published his review in Opera Magazine of Death and the Powers, which he saw at its Monaco premiere last September. Porter has followed composer Tod Machover's work for decades and brings a wealth of knowledge about Tod's work and the history of opera generally to this review. In …
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"Machover is a remarkable composer. [His] technological inventions in giving to sounds, through electronics, new sonorities, new eloquence, have been widely and amply acclaimed. But I'd like to stress what a good opera composer he is, bringing the ‘traditional’, necessary skills to a far from traditional work. Machover has a command of expressive vocal gesture. …
The Economist has published an excellent article "A technology maestro," about Tod Machover's work at the MIT Media Lab. The magazine's web site includes an excellent video documentary. In the documentary, Tod explains how the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band motivated him to explore technologies that could bring the complexity and richness of …
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There's an excellent interview with Death and the Powers composer Tod Machover in the current (December 18, 2010) issue of New Scientist. In a conversation with journalist Ada Brunstein, Tod describes how he developed the concept for "disembodied performance technology" to bring the animatronic set of the opera to life. He explains how he applied …
Hot off the world premiere of his opera Death and the Powers, composer and M.I.T. Media Lab professor Tod Machover has acquired a new feather in his cap - or in this case, a pair of bunny ears. Noted as a "music futurist," Tod has made the venerable magazine's list of the 20 most brilliant …
Opera of the Future 