Transforming Music: From Guitar Hero to Robotic Opera & Beyond

Join us for an evening with musician, inventor and educator Tod Machover, the Muriel R. Cooper Professor of Music & Media at the MIT Media Lab, where he directs the Opera of the Future Group. An influential composer, he has been praised for creating music that breaks traditional artistic and cultural boundaries; his music has been performed and commissioned by some of the world's most important performers and ensembles. He has also created the technologies behind Guitar Hero and Rock Band.

Machover's opera Death and the Powers premiered in Monte-Carlo in the fall 2010. The project was developed by a creative team of international artists, designers, writers and theatrical luminaries, as well as by an interdisciplinary team of Media Lab graduate and undergraduate students. Powers features a robotic, animatronic stage – the first of its kind – that gradually "comes alive" as the opera's main character.

The Museum's John Hollar will moderate a fascinating conversation with Tod - the son of a noted piano teacher and a computer graphics pioneer - who is using technology to revolutionize music. We are very pleased to host him just before Death and the Powers has its San Francisco debut at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in July.