This presentation will trace the development of music research work over the past 20 years in Tod Machover’s Opera of the Future Group at the MIT Media Lab. The musical concepts behind technologies for enhanced virtuosity, hands-on musical experiences for the general public and children, and musical interventions that can shape mental and physical well-being will be discussed. Examples from Machover’s recent music for large ensemble and live electronics will be played, with an emphasis on his new opera Death and the Powers, which employs an animatronic set, a musical chandelier, and a chorus of Operabots. Suggestions will be made about how music can transform the lives of individuals and societies in new and powerful ways.

Tod Machover, composer and inventor, is the Muriel R. Cooper Professor of Music and Media at the MIT Media Lab where he is also Director of the Opera of the Future Group. Before becoming a founding member of the Media Lab, Machover studied composition with Elliott Carter at The Juilliard School and worked at IRCAM, where he was Director of Musical Research from 1980-1984. Machover’s music has been performed and commissioned by many of the world’s most prominent soloists and ensembles, and he has designed technology for an unusual range of users, from virtuosi like Yo-Yo Ma and Prince, to players of Guitar Hero and Rock Band both of which developed out of his Lab. Machover is particularly known for his innovative operas, from VALIS (1987), to the Brain Opera (1996/7), to Skellig (2008) and Death and the Powers (2010).