At The Dallas Opera...

“COMPOSING CONVERSATIONS”
Featuring Tod Machover, Composer of "Death and the Powers"

The Dallas Opera, in partnership with the Museum of Nature & Science, recently announced the first in an ongoing series of “TDO Composing Conversations” reflecting the company’s commitment to new works of opera and the advancement of the art form.

The free, hour-long public presentation will take place on Tuesday, May 24, 2011 at 7:30 PM in Nancy B. Hamon Hall (located in the Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House at the AT&T Performing Arts Center in Downtown Dallas) and will feature special guest Tod Machover, a near legendary Professor of Music and Media at the MIT Media Lab (Cambridge, Massachusetts) as he explores and explains his groundbreaking, critically acclaimed new opera, DEATH AND THE POWERS.

According to The New York Times, “His mating of classical instruments with computer technology has led to developments like a hypercello played by Yo-Yo Ma, a hyperfiddle designed for the virtuoso Joshua Bell and the technology that helped create ‘Guitar Hero,’ the music video game.

“But over the same years, Mr. Machover has retained his enthusiasm for classical composition. From his 1987 adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s sci-fi classic “Valis” to his 1999 version of Tolstoy’s ”Resurrection” with a libretto by the American playwright Laura Harrington, Mr. Machover has searched like a scientist to find the right music to unlock each of his subjects.”

Jeremy Eichler of The Boston Globe says the sci-fi opera that premiered last year in Monte Carlo and was subsequently performed in Boston and Chicago “sets its gaze on subjects both ancient and ultra-modern. In the former camp is the question of whether the soul, or something beyond the body, can live after our death. In the latter camp is the question of the deeper meanings of our infatuation with technology — the way we experience our lives increasingly through its prism…That trailblazing technology is itself put to the service of exploring these points is one of the work’s many ironies that cumulatively leave you with plenty to think about after the robots have powered down for the night.”

The Chicago Tribune gave the new work four stars: “Death and the Powers is a must-see for anybody who cares about the exciting new techno-driven direction music theater is taking in the early 21st century.”

Seating is limited and RSVPs are required. Reserve your seat online OR call 214.443.1044.

Source: The Dallas Opera

Watch a video of scenes from the September 2010 World Premiere in Monaco, Monte Carlo:

 

About Tod Machover

(b. 1953 in New York) Ted Machover has been called "America's most wired composer" by The Los Angeles Times. He is widely recognized as one of the most significant and innovative composers of his generation, and is also celebrated for inventing new technology for music, including Hyperinstruments which he launched in 1986. 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. He has been Professor of Music and Media at the MIT Media Lab (Cambridge, USA) since it was founded in 1985, and is Director of the Lab's Hyperinstruments and Opera of the Future Groups. Since 2006, Machover has also been Visiting Professor of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music in London.

Tod Machover's music has been acclaimed for breaking traditional artistic and cultural boundaries, offering a unique and innovative synthesis of acoustic and electronic sound, of symphony orchestras and interactive computers, and of operatic arias and rock songs. Machover's compositions have been commissioned and performed by many of the world's most prestigious ensembles and soloists, including the Ensemble InterContemporain, the London Sinfonietta, Ensemble Modern, Speculum Musicae, BBC Scottish Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Boston Pops, Houston Grand Opera, Bunkamura (Tokyo), Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Carnegie Hall, Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Collage New Music, Speculum Musicae, Ars Electronica, Casa da Musica (Porto), American Composers Orchestra, Tokyo String Quartet, Kronos Quartet, Ying Quartet, Yo-Yo Ma, Joshua Bell, Kim Kashkahian, David Starobin, Matt Haimovitz, and many more. His work has been awarded numerous prizes and honors, among others from from the Fromm and Koussevitzky Foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts, the German Culture Ministry, and the French Culture Ministry, which named him a Chevalier de l'Order des Arts et des Lettres. In 2007 he was awarded the Steinmetz Prize from the IEEE.

Machover has been particularly noted for his operatic compositions, which include: VALIS (1987), a science fiction opera - called 'the first opera of the 21st century" by The New York Times - commissioned for the tenth anniversary of the Centre Georges Pompidou; Media/Medium (1994), a "magic" opera for magicians Penn & Teller; the audience-interactive Brain Opera (1996/8), commissioned for the first Lincoln Center Festival, toured worldwide, and permanently installed at the Haus der Musik in Vienna since 2000; and Resurrection (1999), based on Tolstoy's last novel and commissioned by Houston Grand Opera. In addition, Machover has created numerous large-scale music installations for the general public, including the building-size underground art experience Meteorite (2000-2005) in Essen, Germany, a collaboration with media entrepreneur Andre Heller.

Tod Machover has invented many new technologies for music, most notably his Hyperinstruments that use smart computers to augment musical expression and creativity. He has designed these hyperinstruments for some of the world's greatest musicians, from Yo-Yo Ma to Prince, as well as for the general public and for children, as in his Toy Symphony project (www.toysymphony.net) - called "a vast, celebratory ode to the joy of music and its power to bring young and old together, diversity into unity (Boston Globe)" - which has been touring worldwide since 2002. Machover's Hyperinstrument research has long been supported by major companies such as Yamaha, and several of his Music Toys have recently been made commercially available by Fisher-Price and others. In addition, the music composition software Hyperscore - originally developed by his team at the MIT Media Lab for children in the context of Toy Symphony - is fast gaining worldwide recognition as a popular creative tool for people of all ages and backgrounds. In awarding Machover the first Kurzweil Prize in Music and Technology in 2003, celebrated inventor and entrepreneur Raymond Kurzweil wrote: "Tod Machover is the only person I am aware of who contributes on a world-class level to both the technology of music creation and to music itself. Even within these two distinct areas, his contributions are remarkably diverse, and of exquisite quality."

Machover's music is published by Boosey & Hawkes and Ricordi Editions, and has been recorded on the Bridge, Oxingale, Erato, Albany and New World labels. Much of his music is also available via iTunes.