Tod Machover — composer, inventor and educator who is Muriel R. Cooper Professor of Music & Media, Director of the Opera of the Future group and the recently appointed Faculty Director of the MIT Media Lab — has been a visionary in creating new technologies for music since the 1980s, and a pioneer in using AI for music composition and performance ever since he incorporated AI elements into his 1987 opera VALIS, which was updated and staged at MIT in the fall of 2023.  He and his team at the MIT Media Lab are currently building the kind of AI music systems that partner with humans, some of which were featured in the new production of VALIS, and others that are part of his new FLOW Symphony. Machover frequently speaks and writes about the need for human-centered AI applications that promote “discovery” in music and the arts.

Machover’s recent work, Flow Symphony, enjoyed its premiere in Seoul, Korea in 2024, with its US premiere in Boston as one of two performances in Summer 2025, with more performances planned for coming seasons.  Machover’s music continues to be regularly showcased in the US, Asia and Europe.

Full Biography of Tod Machover

Machover Named Faculty Director of MIT Media Lab

Machover was named Faculty Director of the MIT Media Lab in May 2025. In this newly created role, he oversees the Media Lab's faculty and research and presides over the Media Lab's Executive Committee. He will participate actively in shaping the Lab’s vision and strategy, while providing a centralized connection between the Media Lab and MIT as a whole; he also leads the Media Lab’s Opera of the Future Group.  Machover joined the MIT Media Lab in 1985, the year it was founded. 

Zoom Talk presented by the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage
Centering Humanity When Collaborating with AI
Tuesday, January 27, 1:00 pm
More info and registration here

Machover discusses his work to connect music, technology, nature, and people. The focus of this talk is 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.  

BBC Radio 3's American Road Trip Series 
Live From Boston - January 9, 2026
Listen here

Machover and his Opera of the Future group at the MIT Media Lab were featured as part of the Boston episode of BBC Radio 3’s “American Roadtrip series.” Broadcast live on January 9, 2026 and  archived here, the broadcast includes discussion of music and AI as well as an excerpt of Machover's Philhadelphia Voices. Audio provided courtesy of BBC Radio 3. 

FLOW Symphony by Tod Machover

Machover’s FLOW Symphony, scored for string orchestra, live AI system, and electronics, was premiered at Seoul Arts Center in Seoul, Korea by Sejong Soloists in August 2024 and received its U.S. premiere in Boston in June 2025, at MIT’s new Thomas Tull Concert Hall, with a second performance at the New England Conservatory's Jordan Hall in August.  At the performances, live string playing is injected into the AI system, which reacts with hybrid sounds that “shape” water in musical ways.

Watch & hear the world premiere of FLOW on YouTube, performed by Sejong Soloists and conducted by Machover in August 2024 (recorded by ARTE Korean TV). 

Listen to an excerpt from FLOW Symphony with string orchestra alone and with strings-and-river morphed. 

Machover’s Works-in-Progress

• Machover is currently composing a major new orchestral work commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Scored for large orchestra, live AI, and electronics, the BSO is scheduled to premiere the new piece from October 22-24, 2026 in Symphony Hall. 
   
• Machover’s next opera, The Overstory, based on Richard Powers’ Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about the relationship between humans and the non-human world (especially trees!) is in development in partnership with Boston Lyric Opera, tentatively scheduled to premiere in 2027-28. A precursor to the opera, "Overstory Overture," was performed in New York and Seoul, Korea with mezzo-soprano Joyce Di Donato, and will tour the US West Coast in Fall 2027. Watch video of the 2023 Seoul performance of Overstory Overture, filmed by Korean ARTE TV, here.
   
• In addition to the performance version of The Overstory, Machover is currently developing a public-participation, installation version of the work called Overstory “Barriers”: A Living BiOpera, supported by the LUMA Foundation in Arles, France. Beginning with workshops in Arles in mid-January 2026, Machover – with collaborators Jay Scheib (theater director) and Katharina Ribbeck (bioengineer) – will develop a new form that allows participants from the Mediterranean to the Amazon to explore the physical barriers (such as mucus membranes) as well as conceptual ones that both facilitate and discourage communication in nature and society.
   
• Machover is currently working on Seoul City Symphony, an extension of his City Symphony series, that will combine Machover’s original music, sounds collected and created by citizens of Seoul, and AI-infused translations of massive amounts of data collected throughout the city and over time, in collaboration with colleagues at Korea’s KAIST Institute. Data collected and ultimately turned into sound using AI might include how building density or pedestrian patterns (or even weather patterns) have changed over 50 years, or over the course of a week or a year. Seoul City Symphony has been commissioned by Sejong Soloists who will premiere the work at Seoul Arts Center in August 2027.
   
• Pianist Gloria Cheng has commissioned a new work for piano and electronics. Starting with a residency in Fall 2026 hosted by MIT’s Center for Art, Science and Technology (CAST) – focused on a re-evaluation of Pierre Boulez’s legacy, based on both Cheng and Machover’s close association with the composer, and including a presentation of Machover’s Re-Structures, composed for Boulez’s 90^th birthday in 2015 – the new work will premiere at MIT and then tour in the U.S. and Europe during the 2027/2028 season.

Recent Talks & Performances

New Version of Sorta Voce unveiled in Summer 2025
Performances of na ew version for cello and electronics in Summer 2025
Machover’s Sorta Voce, commissioned by cellist Matt Haimovitz as part of his “Primavera Project,” was performed in a new version that combines live electronics with the solo cello by Haimovitz twice in July 2025, at Boston’s Jordan Hall and at the Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival in Burlington, VT. Sorta Voce appeared on the first CD release of the “Primavera Project” on PENTATONE in June 2021 and can be heard here. Machover’s Sorta Voce, composed in early 2021, is for unamplified solo cello, with an optional vocal obligato by the cellist. More information about Sorta Voce here. 

“MAICE” (2025) premiered at MIT’s Artfinity Festival
One of Machover’s latest works, MAICE for marimba, cello, live AI and electronics, premiered at MIT’s new Artfinity Festival as part of a “Moving Music” concert on March 13, 2025, hosted by the MIT Media Lab. Featuring virtuoso marimba soloist Ji Hye Jung and Machover on cello, the work is an exploration of the power and limits of AI to mediate between two contrasting instruments, pulling towards extreme juxtaposition before arriving at a surprising synthesis.

Glenn Gould Foundation’s “The Promise of Music” -- Music and AI: Threat or Blessing
In October, Machover spoke about the need for human-centered AI applications that promote “discovery” in music and the arts at The Promise of Music, the First World Congress on the Social Impact of Music, presented by the Glenn Gould Foundation. 

Machover’s talk addressed questions like: “Will AI increase our musical enjoyment or dull our emotional response?” and “Will it enhance our sonic creativity or lead us to become quick-but-facile ‘composers’?” Machover provided context for today’s AI music explosion, explaining current approaches and where they might lead in music learning and creating. He played relevant examples from recent AI-infused compositions by himself and others, and presented an adventurous path forward that blends human and machine in mutually beneficial ways.

Overview of Recent Selected Activities and Highlights

2025

• Schoenberg in Hollywood (2018): West Coast Premiere at LA’s Nimoy Theater, May 2025 / UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music and The Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience. The critically acclaimed performances were supplemented by numerous lectures and workshops about the opera and about Arnold Schoenberg’s life in LA. A high quality video recording of the LA performance of Schoenberg in Hollywood will be made available in 2026.

2024

• Elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences
  Promoted to the rank of Officier des Arts et Lettres by the French Culture Ministry
• Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Colgate University in Hamilton, NY / Commencement seminar, "Sound Futures: How Music and Technology Will Shape AI, Health, and Community”
• “The Dangers & Potentials of AI, Starting with the Current State of the Technology” / Keynote address, 33rd IAMA International Conference in Bruges, Belgium / Streaming HERE 
• A chapter on Machover’s opera Death and the Powers appears in the new book, Inhabiting Ustopia (Springer 2025)
• "AI for Musical Discovery: How Ggenerative AI can nurture human creativity, learning, and community in music”; position paper co-authored with MIT PhD students Nikhil Singh and Manaswi Mishra
• Composing the Future of Health, a co-authored chapter in a collection of essays edited by Renée Fleming, Music and Mind: Harnessing the Arts for Health and Wellness (Penguin Random House, April 2024). 
• Composing the Future of Health panel discussion at the Boston Symphony followed by a performance of Gammified
• Schoenberg in Hollywood (2018) / European premiere of at Vienna Volksoper, April 2022
• Every Thing Has Its Limits for Glass Cymbals featured on PBS TV Series "Confluence”
• Flow Symphony / World Premiere in Seoul, August 24, 2024
• Sailing Through Fire installation at the Venice Biennale, April-November 2024

2023

• Schoenberg in Hollywood  / New production in Shenzhen, China (November 2023)
• Valis (1987) / New Version presented at MIT to critical acclaim; video trailer here
• "Overstory Overture" / World Premiere  (March 7, 2023)
• Resolve Remote, for violin and electronics, released as part of The Royal Academy of Music’s (RAM) 200 PIECES project. Performed by violinist Charles Lovell-Jones, for whom the piece was written, on commission from the Royal Academy of Music. Lovell-Jones premiered the piece at RAM in February 2022. Listen to Resolve Remote here.
• Interviewed about AI and music in The Washington Post and Chamber Music Magazine 

Key Links

• Recording of Resolve Remote, Royal Academy of Music, 2022
• Overstory Overture - Korean ARTE TV video of Seoul Arts Center performance, March 2023
• Video documentation of Glass Cymbal project for PBS TV CONFLUENCE series
• VALIS - video excerpts from new production at MIT, September 2023
• FLOW Symphony - Korean ARTE TV video of Seoul Arts Center performance, August 2024