Tod Machover

Composer

Tod Machover, composer and inventor, is widely known for creating music that breaks traditional artistic and cultural boundaries, both in its sound and style and in its appeal to audiences of all ages and backgrounds. He is Professor of Music & Media and Director of the Opera of the Future Group at the reknowned Media Lab of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, USA), and since 2006 he is also Visiting Professor of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Machover’s music has been commissioned and performed by many of the world's most important performers and ensembles and has received numerous international prizes and awards, including the Chevalier des Arts et Lettres from the French Culture Ministry. He received degrees from The Juilliard School in New York where he studied with Elliott Carter, and was the first Director of Musical Research at Pierre Boulez’s IRCAM institute in Paris.

Besides his compositions, Machover is well known for designing new technologies for music. His Hyperinstruments augment musical expression for everyone – from virtuosi like Yo-Yo Ma to children and seniors – and have led to the development of the videogame hit Guitar Hero. Machover is also the creator of the Toy Symphony, an international music performance and education project, called “a vast, celebratory ode to the joy of music and its power to bring young and old together, diversity into unity (Boston Globe).” The Toy Symphony team has developed many creative tools and pedagogies for introducing young people to music, including Hyperscore composing software.

Machover has composed for most musical forms, but has been particularly attracted to opera, creating such diverse works as VALIS (based on Philip K. Dick’s sci-fi masterpiece), the Brain Opera (which invites the audience to collaborate live and online), and Resurrection (based on Tolstoy’s last novel). After Skellig, his next opera will be the robotic Death and the Powers, which premieres in Monte-Carlo in September 2009.

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Photo credit: Gino Spiro