Concord Conservatory of MusicConcord Conservatory of Music
Join renowned composer, inventor, and educator Tod Machover of the MIT Media Lab to explore the multi-faceted relationship between invention and music.
Witness how the invention of an original musical motive can be constructed into a full-length work, how music mimics its urban environment, and discover how different composers have changed the way we listen as well as reconsidered who creates music and how.
Performed by CCM faculty artist, pianist Yoko Hagino, guest violinist Charlie Lovell-Jones, guest cellist Ariana Falk, and graduate students from the MIT Media Lab, this promises to be a wild ride of music and celebration of bold-but-beautiful ideas.
Featuring works by J.S. Bach, Frederic Rzewski, Liza Lim, Maryanne Amacher, Pauline Oliveros, and three recent compositions by Machover, including the U.S. Premiere of Resolve Remote for violin and electronics.
From bow-and-string to new interactive interfaces and from AI to singalong, please join us for a very unusual evening of sounds and ideas that will spark imaginations, open minds, and bring delight.
Tod Machover
Called “America’s most wired composer” by The Los Angeles Times and “a musical visionary” by The New York Times, Tod Machover’s career has been marked by a commitment to pushing the boundaries of traditional artistic and cultural norms. He is Muriel R. Cooper Professor of Music & Media at the MIT Media Lab, where he also directs the Opera of the Future group.
Before coming to MIT, Machover studied with Elliott Carter and Roger Sessions at The Juilliard School, and was the first Director of Musical Research at Pierre Boulez’s IRCAM in Paris. Besides his role at MIT, Machover lectures worldwide and serves as Visiting Professor of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music in London.
Tod Machover’s compositions, commissioned and performed by elite ensembles, opera houses, and esteemed soloists worldwide, have received numerous prizes and awards, including a Chevalier of Arts et Lettres accolade from the French Culture Ministry and being named Musical America’s Composer of the Year.
Machover is known for developing new technologies for music, from Hyperinstruments that enhance performance expressivity, to Hyperscore that opens musical creativity for everyone, to numerous sonic strategies for promoting health and wellbeing. Machover is especially known for his groundbreaking operas including the AI-infused VALIS (1987), the audience-interactive Brain Opera (1996), and the robotic Death and the Powers (2010), a Pulitzer Prize finalist. His Schoenberg in Hollywood (2018) was performed in Shenzhen, China in November 2023, and he is currently working on his next opera, The Overstory, based on Richard Powers’ Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.
We’re grateful to our sponsors!
Lead Concert Series Sponsor
Supporting Sponsor
This program is supported in part by a grant from the Concord Cultural Council and Acton-Boxborough Cultural Council, local agencies which are supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency.
