Tod Machover

He is widely recognised 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, he has also been Visiting Professor of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music.

Tod’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. His compositions have been commissioned and performed by many of the world's most prestigious ensembles and soloists. He has received 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. He was the first recipient of the World Technology Award for the Arts, in 2010.

Tod’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.