Composer Tod Machover has received the inaugural Award for Arts Advocacy from the Kennedy Center’s National Committee for the Performing Arts. The award, presented at the committee’s meeting in Boston on September 21, is given to individuals who have dramatically affected the performing arts landscape through their arts advocacy efforts, honoring individuals who “support the arts in schools, communities, and everyday lives.” Machover is head of the MIT Media Lab’s Opera of the Future group, and composer of five operas including Death and the Powers (2010), which features a robotic, animatronic stage that gradually “comes alive.” In March 2013, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra premiered Machover’s A Toronto Symphony: Concerto for Composer and City, a crowdsourced work whose creation relied heavily on technology. He is also inventor of Hyperinstruments technology and is currently researching ways to use music therapy for emotionally and physically challenged people.
Posted September 26, 2013
