On January 27, composer, MIT Professor of Music and Media, and technologist Tod Machover will discuss his practice, how he sees AI as a potential collaborator (while also acknowledging its dangers), and how he centers humanity in a world increasingly influenced by complex technologies and difficult-to-harness media.
Machover works to connect music, technology, nature, and people. Along with creating boundary-breaking music, he works to develop AI systems that demonstrate cultural sensitivity and to help celebrated virtuosi—as well as musicians of all abilities—to expand the potential of music.
Tuesday, January 27, 2026
1:00-2:00 p.m. EST
Register via Zoom
About the Speaker
Tod Machover is Faculty Director of the MIT Media Lab where he is also Muriel R. Cooper Professor of Music and Media and Director of the Opera of the Future group. Called a “musical visionary” by The New York Times, Machover creates music that breaks traditional artistic and cultural boundaries. Machover is known for developing new technologies for music. He lectures and writes frequently about music and its widest potential.
His own compositions have been performed and commissioned by—among others—Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, Kronos Quartet, the Lucerne Festival (where he was 2015 Composer-in-Residence); the Centre Pompidou (Paris); Seoul Arts Center, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, and mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato. He is especially celebrated for his groundbreaking operas, including the AI-infused VALIS (1987; revised 2023); the audience-interactive Brain Opera (1996); the robotic Death and the Powers (2010), finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; and Schoenberg in Hollywood (2018) “a composer biography like no other” (The Boston Globe) which—after touring in the U.S., Europe, and Asia—will be released on video in 2026.
Machover is currently working on his next opera, The Overstory, based on Richard Powers’ Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about the relationship between humans and the non-human world (especially trees!), which will premiere at Boston Lyric Opera in early 2028; on a new commission from the Boston Symphony Orchestra for premiere in Fall 2026; and also on “City Symphonies”—sonic portraits of places combining “music” and “found sound,” composed for and with the people who live there—for Seoul (2027) and Los Angeles (2028).