Tod Machover

Tod Machover is recognized as one of the most innovative composers active today and a pioneer in the use of technology in music. He is praised for creating music that breaks traditional artistic and cultural boundaries and for developing new tools and concepts that expand music’s potential for everyone, from celebrated virtuosos to musicians of all abilities. Machover currently serves as 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.

Tod Machover’s compositions have been commissioned and performed by many of the world’s most prestigious ensembles and soloists, including the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Boston Pops, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Lucerne Festival, Centre Georges Pompidou, Sejong Soloists (New York and Seoul), cellist Yo-Yo Ma, and mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato. His many honors include being named Composer of the Year by Musical America as well as an Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Culture Ministry. In 2026 he received the George Peabody Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Music from Johns Hopkins University.

Machover is especially known for his visionary operas, including the AI-infused VALIS, the audience-interactive Brain Opera, the robotic Death and the Powers (a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), and Schoenberg in Hollywood, which has been performed throughout the U.S., Europe, and China. He is currently working on his next opera, The Overstory, based on Richard Powers’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, for premiere with Boston Lyric Opera in spring 2028.

Machover’s collaborative “City Symphonies” invite people of all ages and backgrounds to contribute to musical portraits of their cities, combining traditional musical resources with sounds discovered, collected, and created by local communities. City Symphonies have been created with Toronto, Edinburgh, Perth, Lucerne, Detroit, and Philadelphia, with a Seoul City Symphony premiering in August 2027.

Machover is also widely recognized for designing new technologies for music performance and creation—from Hyperinstruments, which enhance performance expressivity for virtuosos and amateurs, to Hyperscore, which uses simple lines and colors to open musical creativity for young people, to numerous sonic strategies for promoting wellbeing and combatting disease, to exploring the positive potential of AI in music. His latest exploration of interactive AI in performance can be heard in his 2026 work for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, already and not yet.