Tod Machover has been widely recognized as one of the most important and
innovative composers of his generation. His music breaks traditional artistic
and cultural boundaries, offering a synthesis of acoustic and electronic
sound, of symphony orchestras and interactive computers, of operatic arias and
rock songs, and that delivers serious and powerful messages in an accessible
and immediate way. After studying composition at the Juilliard School with
Elliott Carter and Roger Sessions, Machover was Director of Musical Research
at Pierre Boulez's IRCAM Institute in Paris (1978-85). He is Associate
Professor of Music and Media at the MIT Media Lab, where he is also
co-director of the new "Things That Think" consortium.
Machover's music has been commissioned and performed by many of the world's
most important musicians and ensembles, such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic,
the London Sinfonietta, the Ensemble InterContemporain, the Ensemble Modern,
and The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. His work has received numerous prizes
and awards, and in 1995 he was named a "Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des
Lettres," one of France's highest cultural honors. Machover's award-winning
opera "VALIS" was commissioned by the Centre Pompidou in Paris to celebrate
its tenth anniversary in 1987. He composed an unusual mini-opera,
"Media/Medium," in 1994 for the magicians Penn and Teller, who toured it
throughout the United States.
In addition to his work as a composer, Machover
is widely noted as a designer of new technology for music. He is the
inventor of Hyperinstruments, a technology that uses smart computers to
augment musical expression. Some of these hyperinstruments have been designed
for such diverse virtuosi as Yo-Yo Ma and Prince, and the "Hyperstring
Trilogy" is one of the culminating points of this development. Another
direction that hyperinstrument work has taken since 1991 has been towards
instruments, tools and environments for non-professional musicians in an
attempt to bring creativity and expression to everyday life. The Brain Opera
is the culminating point to date of this path. After the Brain Opera,
Machover will be working on a new hyperstring work for the Kronos Quartet, and
an opera about the CIA for the Houston Grand Opera.
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