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NEW MUSIC FROM TOD MACHOVER THIS SUMMER
Every Thing Has Its Limits for/with Glass Cymbals
on PBS TV Series "CONFLUENCE," July 19
FLOW Symphony World Premiere in Seoul, August
Sailing Through Fire at the
Venice Biennale through November 2024
Tod Machover, music tech pioneer, also speaks out about the need for human-centered AI applications that promote “discovery” in music and the arts.
Machover — a composer, inventor and educator who is Muriel R. Cooper Professor of Music & Media and Director of the Opera of the Future group at the MIT Media Lab — has been a pioneer in the convergence of AI and music since the 1980s, when he incorporated AI elements into his 1987 opera VALIS, which was updated and staged at MIT in the fall of 2023. He and his team at the MIT Media Lab are currently building the kind of AI music systems that partner with humans, some of which were featured in the 2023 production of VALIS, and others that are part of his new FLOW Symphony.
As the impact of AI on music-making has taken hold in the public eye, Machover continues to speak expertly and urgently about the need for human-centered AI systems that enhance human creativity rather than aim to reproduce or replace it. He recently delivered keynote addresses at UCLA, Berklee College of Music and at IAMA's International Conference in Bruges, and laid out a path forward in a recent position paper commissioned by MIT Press. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and has been widely tapped as an expert in this area, with interviews in The Washington Post, Chamber Music Magazine and I Care If You Listen.
More information on these recent and upcoming projects is below.
Full Biography of Tod Machover
NEW COMPOSITIONS
CONFLUENCE on PBS
Every Thing Has Its Limits for/with Glass Cymbals
Premieres July 19 on on PBS
VIDEO: Watch the CONFLUENCE trailer
Tod Machover's process of experimentation with "glass cymbals" was designed especially for the new three-part series CONFLUENCE, which explores the enduring and surprising connections between the arts and the fields of science, engineering and design. Machover is among the array of creative people — including Nick Cave, Iris van Herpen, Refik Anadol and Joshua Bell — featured in the series who are crossing boundaries where multiple perspectives are fused to open up new insights.Episode 2, in which Machover is featured, premieres on PBS TV on July 19; the first episode of CONFLUENCE premieres on July 12.
VIDEO: Watch Tod Machover testing glass sounds
Viewers follow the entire process as Machover works with UK artist and material scientist Zoe Laughlin and glass artist and engineer Michael Stern to develop a new instrument — a glass cymbal — that Machover describes as simultaneously "sonically superb, percussively resilient, and extremely fragile." Through experimentation with different glass textures, techniques and resonances, they ultimately create glass cymbals on which Machover performs a new composition — Every Thing Has Its Limits — in a one-time-only event for an intimate audience gathered in his 18th-century barn outside of Boston.
To watch the episode of CONFLUENCE featuring Machover:
- On PBS TV, check your local listings, beginning July 19.
- Online for free, visit PBS.org beginning July 19 (the episodes will remain online for two months after the premiere on July 19).
For more information about all three episodes of CONFLUENCE, visit Confluence TV.
World Premiere of FLOW Symphony
Commissioned and Performed by Sejong Soloists
Seoul Arts Center, Seoul, Korea
August 24, 2024
Information about the performance HERE.
On August 24, Tod Machover will be in Seoul, Korea to conduct the world premiere of his latest composition — FLOW Symphony — at Seoul Arts Center, performed by Sejong Soloists, who commissioned the new piece. FLOW Symphony is scored for string orchestra and electronics, and employs a custom-designed AI system to both enhance the performance and to create a constantly transforming online version that allows the piece to be experienced in many different forms. “Flow” refers specifically to the process and the movement of rivers, one of which — outside of Stowe, Vermont — Machover recorded extensively to create acoustic material for the piece. Along with a varied collection of specially recorded “river-like” sounds developed with Sejong Soloists, Machover and his team at the MIT Media Lab created an AI model based entirely on Machover’s original sounds/music that can morph between natural sounds (like a running river) and musical ones (created by an ensemble, like a string orchestra), between simplicity and complexity, and between calm and intensity.
Listen to an excerpt from FLOW Symphony with string orchestra alone and with strings-and-river morphed through the new AI Radio system.
Left: Tod Machover recording Miller Brook River outside Stowe, Vermont for the FLOW Symphony project
Right: Machover’s barn studio outside of Boston where final electronic elements of FLOW Symphony were being completed over July 4th weekend.
During the performance, live string playing is injected into the AI system, which reacts with hybrid sounds that “shape” water in musical ways. “In the online version,” says Machover, “the AI system acts like an ‘AI Radio,’ allowing the listener to use dials to redirect the development of the composition, delving into detail and exploring favorite harmonies, melodies and textures, all the while retaining the overall shape and feel - the personality - of the piece. Like a river, FLOW Symphony is always changing but always the same, revealing new sonic secrets as one listens more carefully,” Machover explains. “It is somehow both deeply calming and seriously stimulating.”
Work on the online version of the piece will continue after the August premiere with the goal of presenting U.S. performances of the final form — along with an AI Radio app and online version — in Spring 2025.
Sailing Through Fire (2024)
60th Venice Biennale through November 24
VIDEO: Listen to and watch an excerpt from Tod Machover’s Sailing Through Fire
Tod Machover’s recent musical composition/installation, Sailing Through Fire (2024), opened at the 60th Venice Biennale on April 20, 2024 and is on view through November 24, 2024. The work is a collaboration with celebrated Korean visual artist, Lee Bae, and is an integral part of a full-building installation at Venice’s Wilmotte Foundation. This multisensory experience takes visitors through the circular processes of nature — from growth to destruction to regeneration to creation — and is based on an ancient Korean ritual: collecting wishes for the New Year on slips of paper, building an enormous structure out of pine tree limbs topped with a bamboo tower, burning the entire structure in an all-night ceremony, and then using the remaining ashes and charcoal to create stunning artifacts that project hope and determination for the future. Lee Bae’s multiple art works in the installation include a spectacular wall of reflective carbon puzzle pieces and a glowing yellow “moon room” beckoning visitors to reflect on the relationship between humans and nature.
Machover's music for the installation was commissioned especially for the pavilion and greets visitors as they enter the building. It accompanies a monumental 60-foot-long video that documents Lee Bae’s process of burning wood into ash, and using that resultant charcoal for creation. The music uses a combination of cello sounds (both lyrical and brush-like scrapings), transformed recordings of the actual burning ritual and other nature sounds, and various layers of electronics. Sailing Through Fire plays at the entrance to the exhibit and throughout the building.
La Maison de la Lune Brûlée is on view at the Wilmotte Foundation in Venice, Italy Tuesday through Sunday from 10am to 6pm CET now through November 24, 2024. The exhibition was curated by Valentina Buzzi and produced by Fondation d’Entreprise Wilmotte, Hansol Foundation-Museum in collaboration with Johyun Gallery.
More information about Sailing Through Fire at the Venice Bienniale, along with a a photo gallery, can be found HERE.
HONORS & AWARDS
In April, Machover was elected to the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences, whose current members represent today’s innovative thinkers in every field and profession, including more than two hundred and fifty Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners. The formal 2024 induction ceremony will take place in Cambridge, MA on September 21.Machover joins a notable roster of illustrious members, past and present, including Benjamin Franklin, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Alexander Graham Bell, Margaret Mead, Jonas Salk, Barbara McClintock, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Aaron Copland, Martha Graham, Georgia O’Keeffe, E. O. Wilson, Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell, Yo-Yo Ma and Renée Fleming. Founded in 1780, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences honors excellence and convenes leaders from every field of human endeavor to examine new ideas, address issues of importance to the nation and the world, and work together. The Academy's work has helped set the direction of research and analysis in science and technology policy, global security and international affairs, social policy, education, the humanities, and the arts.
In May, Machover received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Colgate University in Hamilton, NY, where he also held a commencement seminar the day prior, titled "Sound Futures: How Music and Technology Will Shape AI, Health, and Community.”
WRITING & SPEAKING
Keynote Address: The Dangers & Potentials of AI, Starting with the Current State of the Technology
33rd IAMA International Conference
Bruges, Belgium, Monday, April 29, 2024
Now Streaming HERE
Tod Machover delivered the keynote address at the annual conference of IAMA (International Artist Managers' Association) this spring in Bruges, Belgium. The address, which offers Machover's perspective on the dangers, challenges and opportunities of AI, especially in the field of classical music and the arts, is now available online.
Among the topics he touches on are: the extraordinary speed at which AI technology is developing and being used by the general public; new AI platforms like Suno that claim to "create" music using AI prompts but don’t permit adequate customization of models or results, while also raising deeply complicated copyright issues; and -- on the other side of the coin -- technologies that enhance and extend human creativity for both experts and amateurs through what Machover calls “musical discovery. There is now an urgency," Machover says, "to provide examples and create tools that open up these creative opportunities for all, before closed-and-limited systems become ubiquitous."
Watch a video of the talk HERE.
AI for Musical Discovery: How Generative AI can nurture human creativity, learning, and community in music
MIT Press
Machover co-authored a comprehensive position paper, "AI for Musical Discovery: How Generative AI can nurture human creativity, learning, and community in music," with his MIT PhD students Nikhil Singh and Manaswi Mishra.
In this paper, Machover argues that the true potential of generative AI lies in cultivating musical discovery, expanding our individual and collective musical horizons. He and his coauthors outline a vision for systems that nurture human creativity, learning, and community. They discuss possible models and strategies for developing new discovery-focused musical tools, drawing on previous and ongoing research that ranges from individual usage to the many ways communities can be involved in creative projects.
Read the complete paper here.
Composing the Future of Health:
Gamma Frequencies and Machover's "Gammified"
Machover has been deeply involved, along with several MIT colleagues, in cutting-edge research that shows the tremendous potential in using music -- and certain frequencies in particlar -- to improve health and wellbeing, as well as to address Alzheimer's and other brain ailments. Their research has shown that frequencies of about 40 Hz. (approximately the low-E on the piano) play fundamental roles in the human brain. Specifically, healthy brains hum with this frequency, which in turn activates many functions central to mental sharpness. Studies have shown convincingly that these frequencies help remove plaque associated with Alzheimer's Disease and reverse the progression of symptoms. Machover's Gammified for string quartet and electronics is one of his recent experiments in embedding such frequencies in a specially-designed musical composition, including a constantly-evolving electronic drone layer (at these frequencies) that plays continuously throughout the piece.
Describing this process as well as other recent experiments in “designing” music to promote health and wellbeing, Machover contributed a chapter about this research and its potential to a collection of essays edited by Renée Fleming, Music and Mind: Harnessing the Arts for Health and Wellness (Penguin Random House, April 2024). He also presented a a talk on this topic, Composing the Future of Health, at the Boston Symphony in April, which was followed by a performance of Gammified.