Tod Machover's Death and the Powers

In her director’s note for the American premiere of Death and the Powers: The Robots’ Opera, which was composed by Tod Machover, with a libretto by poet Robert Pinsky, Diane Paulus, artistic director of the American Repertory Theater, wrote that this “work of music-theater . . .

Media Date 
March 25, 2011
Media Source 
The Boston Phoenix
Media Location 
Boston, MA
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Media Quote 

Machover’s music, which combines a live orchestra (the splendid BMOP, conducted by Gil Rose) and ‘live’ electronic manipulation by a team from Machover’s Media Lab, is powerful.

Media Contact Name 
Lloyd Schwartz

Full-bodied arias in a post-organic world

Composer Tod Machover heads the Opera of the Future project at MIT’s Media Lab, and that term nicely describes his “Death and the Powers: The Robots’ Opera,” which was given its U.S. premiere by the American Repertory Theater in Boston last week. It is clearly recognizable as opera: It has a story and characters, and its full-blooded arias, elegantly illuminating the apt (if occasionally self-conscious) text by the poet Robert Pinsky, are sung with passionate intensity by humans.

Media Date 
March 24, 2011
Media Source 
The Wall Street Journal
Media Location 
Boston, MA
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Media Quote 

Conductor Gil Rose ably coordinated these disparate musical forces, welding the 90-minute, intermission-free opera into a strong dramatic arc.

Media Contact Name 
Heidi Waleson

Death and the Powers, Cutler Majestic Theatre, Boston

Technological wonders go only so far towards achieving results in the opera house. Tod Machover’s Death and the Powers: the Robots’ Opera, the latest work by a mainstay of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab, has a dramatis personae that includes 12 functioning robots. Yet the quality of Machover’s music, steeped in the language of Elliott Carter and Pierre Boulez, wedded to an imaginative libretto by Robert Pinsky, is what makes the opera worth seeing.

Media Date 
March 22, 2011
Media Source 
Financial Times
Media Location 
Boston, MA
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Media Quote 

The fine conducting by Gil Rose underscores that it is the human dimension that really counts.

Media Contact Name 
George Loomis

Second Life: Death and the Powers from A.R.T.

Tod Machover’s new sci-fi opera, “Death and the Powers,’’ sets its gaze on subjects both ancient and ultra-modern. In the former camp is the question of whether the soul, or something beyond the body, can live after our death. In the latter camp is the question of the deeper meanings of our infatuation with technology — the way we experience our lives increasingly through its prism.

Media Date 
March 21, 2011
Media Source 
Boston Globe
Media Location 
Boston, MA
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Media Quote 

Gil Rose led with great focus from the pit.

Media Contact Name 
Jeremy Eichler

Bolcom, BMOP, and the graceful ghost of Ligeti

I’m late with my thoughts on the Boston Modern Orchestra Project‘s “Bolcom with BMOP” evening last Sunday. Which may have something to do with the fact that I was slightly, but not entirely, disappointed by the program. I was drawn to the concert because I’m a fan of its eponymous star, the distinguished American composer William Bolcom - or at least I’m a huge fan (like many people) of his piano and vocal music (a favorite selection, “The Poltergeist,” above).

Media Date 
March 12, 2011
Media Source 
The Hub
Media Location 
Boston, MA
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Media Quote 

The upshot of the piece seemed to be that every musical style was in effect a kind of harlequin, and the whole of musical history therefore, yes, merely a commedia.

Media Contact Name 
Thomas Garvey

Not at all Monsters of Modernism

Gil Rose, who has included Tufts University as one of the bases of his Boston Modern Orchestra Project, brought a group of nineteen of Boston’s best freelancers to Distler Hall on Sunday afternoon, January 30, for a program of vivid (and not at all monstrous) American works for small orchestra and chamber groups. BMOP gave the same program at Bowdoin College and Wellesley College before this well-seasoned wrap-up. The audience was smaller than it ought to have been, but the weather was certainly much to blame for that.

Media Date 
February 2, 2011
Media Source 
The Boston Musical Intelligencer
Media Location 
Boston, MA
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Media Quote 

BMOP once again shows itself at the forefront of new music activities not only on Boston, but in America generally.

Media Contact Name 
Mark DeVoto

Professor Brody's "monsters" scare some but inspire many

Were music a liquid, the music performed in the “Monsters of Modernism” concert would be a steaming mug of black coffee. And don’t even think of asking for milk and sugar. Boston Modern Orchestra Project’s Jan. 29 concert, led by conductor Gil Rose, turned heads with its unconventional music. The composers were “uncompromising,” Rose said. “They wrote the music that they believed in,” regardless of what the popular norms were. Among the contemporary composers featured was Wellesley Music Professor Martin Brody.

Media Date 
February 2, 2011
Media Source 
The Wellesley News
Media Location 
Boston, MA
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Media Quote 

One thing is certain and that is that BMOP gives an outstanding performance.

Media Contact Name 
Stephanie Gall

A double dose of BMOP

For classical music nerds, the term ‘Double Concerto’ might likely bring to mind Vivaldi’s many works for pairs of violins or other instruments, or for the more romantically-inclined, Brahms’ Double Concerto for violin and cello. But there are many examples in the 20th and 21st centuries as well, for all kinds of instrument combinations. Last Friday night, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project gave a diverse sampling of the genre entitled Double Trouble, featuring four works composed between 1938 and 2010.

Media Date 
January 28, 2011
Media Source 
Miss Music Nerd
Media Location 
Boston, MA
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Media Quote 

I really need to put Tippett on my to-listen list now.

BMOP tackles double concertos with trouble

The double concerto, pace Brahms, is a creature of the Baroque era, really a special version of the concerto grosso with a concertino of only a couple of players blending with and emerging from the ripieno. The restructuring of large-scale composition around sonata form deprived composers of the natural recurrences of melodic strands that fueled the concerto grosso, making solo concertos a more logical way to achieve timbral contrast within the continual-development process of the more modern forms; yet, some Classical-era composers could not let go.

Media Date 
January 25, 2011
Media Source 
The Boston Musical Intelligencer
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Media Quote 

Everson and Berlin performed brilliantly, with golden tone and pure lines; the orchestra was sonically radiant.

Media Contact Name 
Vance R. Koven

Fuse Classical reviews BMOP's "Virtuosity’s Velocity"

The Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) kicked off its season with a Jordan Hall program on November 13. Entitled “Virtuosity’s Velocity,” the concert was devoted to five American works for chamber orchestra. The music was demanding and difficult, but conductor Gil Rose did indeed elicit plenty of virtuosity from his ensemble.

Media Date 
November 20, 2010
Media Source 
The Arts Fuse
Media 
Media Quote 

The music was demanding and difficult, but conductor Gil Rose did indeed elicit plenty of virtuosity from his ensemble.

Media Contact Name 
Caldwell Titcomb

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