Last week's 21c Liederabend at the Brooklyn Academy of Music garnered some media attention. Here's the New York Times' review: A Wink Toward Tradition in a Modern Evening. Public radio station WNYC provided a preview and aired "Sophia's Aria" from Tod Machover's opera VALIS. Listen here: A Modern Liederabend. This year's 21c Lieberabend included a performance of …
BBC report on “Festival City”
Last night's world premiere of "Festival City" went off without a hitch. The Royal Scottish National Orchestra players were on fire, and the acoustics in Usher Hall were excellent. Kudos too to the Edinburgh International Festival audience for their commitment and enthusiasm to new work. Check out this BBC report from the rehearsal, including a …
Vocal Vibrations (Video)
Post by Elly Jessop and Rebecca Kleinberger As part of the Dalai Lama’s visit to MIT, the Opera of the Future Group performed an experiment in collaboration with the vocal ensemble Blue Heron, Affectiva, Elliott Hedman, and Tenzin Priyadarshi, director of the Dalai Lama Center at MIT. During Blue Heron’s stunning performance of early choral …
Toy Symphony in Glasgow (2002)
We wanted to share this lovely video footage from our archives. On June 2, 2002, Tod Machover's Toy Symphony was performed by the BBC Scottish Symphony under the baton of Gerhard Markson. Renowned violinist Joshua Bell played a special "hyperviolin". He shared the spotlight with kids playing Beat Bugs and Music Shapers, as well as a children's chorus. …
Armenia Project – Video of concert now available
It's wonderful what young people can achieve if just given the tools, encouragement and respect. Back on February 25, 2012, two of Armenia’s elite musical ensembles dig into new pieces composed entirely by children from Armenia and the United States. The children used Hyperscore software developed by the MIT Media Lab's Opera of the Future group. …
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Blast from the past – Brain Opera
You never know what you'll stumble across on the Internet. This week's buried treasure come to light is this video clip from a presentation Tod Machover gave in 1996 at Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria. Visitors to the famous electronic arts festival had an opportunity to explore the interactive installation and take in a live …
The Economist: Inventing the opera of the future (video)
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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Interview with Tod Machover 1: The Idea Behind Death and the Powers
Tod and I got together during an extremely rare moment of down time to shoot this interview a few days ago, right inside the beautiful Opéra de Monte-Carlo, or Monte Carlo Opera House. We had so much to talk about that I decided to cut up his interview into a few installments, starting with how …
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Memory Download Sequence Shoot
Last weekend the cast and crew ventured out to Tod's farm in Waltham, MA to film scenes from the memory download sequence. Directed by Matt Checkowski of The Department of The 4th Dimension, the shoot began in the early morning at the Media Lab and ended up out in Waltham at around 7 PM, at …
Open House at the Media Lab
So things have been pretty busy over here at Opera of the Future! Last week Iwas introduced to the creative team in a series of meetings aimed at evaluating the progress of the set, the music, and the singers. On Monday morning I sat in on a meeting with production designer Alex McDowell, technical director …
Opera of the Future 