Tod Machover - Composer, Inventor, Educator

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News

April 3, 2011COT’s dazzling ‘robot opera’ poses provacative new questions”, published in Chicago Tribune

Death and the Powers is a cautionary tale about the romance and mystery of technology that enlists some of the most complex, sophisticated technology to have been put on the operatic stage.”
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March 2011 “Guitar Hero Goes to the Opera”, published in The Atlantic

“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.”
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March 31, 2011 “Monsters and Immortals–Seriously”, published in Philadelphia Inquirer

Death and the Powers doesn’t point the way to a new era of opera. It’s there. Now.”
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January 2011 “Death and the Powers”, published in Opera

“Machover is a remarkable composer. [His] technological inventions in giving to sounds, through electronics, new sonorities, new eloquence, have been widely and amply acclaimed.”
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May 18, 2011 “The MIT factor: celebrating 150 years of maverick genius”, published in The Guardian

“Yo-Yo Ma’s cello may not be the obvious starting point for a journey into one of the world’s great universities. But, as you quickly realise when you step insite the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), there’s precious little about the place that is obvious.”
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October 5, 2010 “An Unlikely Confluence of ‘Powers’”, published in Musical America

“The world premiere of Tod Machover's Death and the Powers in the Salle Garnier on 24 September, could help the principality regain its reputation for artistic innovation.”
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September 10, 2010 “Disembodied performance”, published in MIT News

“Tod Machover's Death and the Powers, which features robots as performers, premieres this month. It this the future of opera?”
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August 31, 2010 “Is music going back to its roots?”, published in BBC News

“Technology has paved the way for almost anyone to hit the right notes. Are some people pining for a more authentic sound?”
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July 15, 2010 “Q&A: Tod machover on personal music”, published in Nature

“As Machover prepares for the world premiere of his robotic opera Death and the Powers in Monaco in September, he explains how his interactive performance techniques might lead to personalized therapies.”
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Aug. 2010 “Tod Machover on Composing Music by Computer”, published in Smithsonian Magazine

“The inventor and MIT professor talks about where music and technology will intersect over the course of the next 40 years.”
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June 23, 2010 “Genius Composition”, published in Boston Magazine

“How professor Tod Machover and a group of MIT scientists are creating the future of music.”
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Jan. 13, 2010 Tod Machover's new article, “On Future Performance”, published in The New York Times

“In fact, at the start of 2010 one wonders whether there is any more music technology to invent, or whether our musical imaginations and artistic cultures simply need to catch up. The answer is both, and then some.”
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Dec. 19, 2008 Tod Machover's new article, “Guitar Hero”, published in RSA Journal (London)

“Music—and most of the arts—has come very far from such a ‘healthy’ ecology, and it is this that we need to reinvent…. Doing so will allow music to exert its most powerful possible influence on society at large. Surely we can imagine a world where music is at least as nourishing as a three-star meal?”
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Dec. 15, 2008 Skellig premieres to raves at Newcastle

Tod Machover's Opera Called ‘Brilliant’, ‘Alluring’, ‘Intriguing’, ‘Extraordinary’. MIT's SA+P Journal says: “Called mysterious, eerie and enthralling, Skellig combines world famous singers with a youth chorus and the acoustic Nothern Sinfonia with Machover's signature electronics, using innovative performance technologies developed at the Media Lab. And the press has gone wild for it.”
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Dec. 15, 2008 Video of Tod Machover's RSA (London) talk posted to web

“The Future of Music: ‘America's most wired composer’ Tod Machover visits the RSA to share his vision of how music-making can be made genuinely accessible and life-changing for all.” View Tod's talk, as well as his conversation with John Kennedy, Global Chairman and Chieve executive of IFPI, the organization that represents the global recording industry worldwide.
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Nov. 17, 2008 The New York Times lauds VinylCello after Haimovitz performance at Poisson Rouge

“Still better was Tod Machover's "VinylCello." Mr. Machover, long a leading innovator in musical technology, is also a cellist. Surely that explained why he was able to showcase Mr. Haimovitz's ardent lyricism and DJ Olive's sharp reflexes with equal assurance.”
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Nov. 16, 2008 Machover featured on NPR's Weekend Edition

“A Composer at the Edge of Sound”: Tod Machover's goal is to put music into the hands of people who want to play it—or at least imagine it.
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Nov. 16, 2008 NPR's “Weekend Soapbox” Features ‘Tod Machover's New Opera’

“Machover's latest endeavor is called Death and the Powers, and is set to premiere next fall in Monaco. Wrap your mind grapes around this: the plot is basically that a wealthy and powerful man, seeking a sort of immortality, ‘downloads’ himself into his surroundings so he can have infinite influence over his legacy.”
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Oct. 24, 2008 Skellig gathers attention in anticipation of its world premiere

Tod Machover's new opera, Skellig, is generating buzz in the UK, Europe and beyond in anticipation of its world premiere performances at the Sage Gateshead, Newcastle (UK) starting November 24th.
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Oct. 20, 2008 Machover part of "witty" Sound Brain concert with Present Music

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Oct. 16, 2008 Matt Haimovitz to perform VinylCello at New York's Le Poisson Rouge

With a cutting-edge program already lauded by the press in DC, Boston and nationally on NPR's All Things Considered, cellist Matt Haimovitz and pianist Geoffrey Burleson bring "Odd Couple" to Le Poisson Rouge, New York's downtown multi-media cabaret space on Thursday, November 13th.
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Oct. 6, 2008 Machover to give Major Address at Royal Society of the Arts in London

On November 11th, Tod Machover will make a rare visit to the UK to offer a glimpse of the future of music and to share his vision of how music-making can be made genuinely accessible and life-changing for all.
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Sept. 30, 2008 Machover discusses Pierre Boulez for BBC TV's "Visionaries" Series

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Sept. 25, 2008 Lloyd Schwartz raves about VinylCello after Boston ICA concert

"And Haimovitz, with DJ Olive's electronic samplings, tore into Tod Machover�s exciting and very beautiful VinylCello (2007), the festival's only truly avant-garde piece. Machover, one should not forget, can also be a great melodist."
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Sept. 8, 2008 'Guitar Hero' guru makes music with robots

The self-described composer/inventor/educator from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab is working at the leading edge of interactive music.
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