The Toy Symphony project comes to the United States this spring following a wildly successful European launch. Created by composer and inventor Tod Machover with his team at the MIT Media Lab, Toy Symphony is a three-year global venture that radically alters how children are introduced to music, and bridges the gap between professional musicians and children, audience and performers.

Using groundbreaking, hi-tech Music Toys designed by Machover and the MIT Media Lab (including Beatbugs, Music Shapers, and Hyperscore), Toy Symphony lets children engage in sophisticated listening, performing, and composing alongside world-class adult virtuosi, conductors, composers, and symphony orchestras from around the world. Music Toys encourage expression and creativity in advance of technical mastery, eliminating years of practice while rewarding imagination and feeling.

The U.S. premiere of Toy Symphony encompasses an abundance of exciting activities: intensive educational workshops; demo performances; a major museum exhibit at the Cooper-Hewitt in Manhattan; a CD release of Machover's moving Hyperstring Trilogy; and the commercial launch of Music Toys by Fisher-Price. All of this leads up to two culminating concerts in Boston (April 26 at MIT's Kresge Auditorium) and New York (May 17 & 18 at the World Financial Center's Winter Garden). The culminating concerts feature commissioned works by Machover, his colleagues, and children who composed with Hyperscore in the pre-concert workshops. Performers include local children with Music Toys (Beatbugs and Shapers); a children's choir with voices transformed; a Hyperviolin played by the virtuosic Irish violin star Cora Venus Lunny in her first U.S. appearances; and conductor Gil Rose leading the Boston Modern Orchestra Project as a Hyperorchestra using its natural sound to shape and control massive electronic textures.

In the words of Machover: "We appreciate music's wonders and powers more fully if we absorb music and touch it, shape it, ourselves. This is most true of children, who are intrinsically well suited to music-making with their boundless energy, emotional openness, and creative imaginations. But kids are also often shut out by music's many difficulties. We designed the interconnecting, immersive structure of Toy Symphony to let children unlock the expressive mysteries of music before learning the technical prerequisites. This way they can fall in love with music first-and then demand deeper knowledge and lifelong participation."

Toy Symphony not only lays the groundwork for the continued musical development of the participating children, but will hopefully yield new insights into the learning process and the role that technology can play in bringing music and children together. The result is a multifaceted event that reaches a very broad audience and galvanizes and stimulates the orchestra with youthful and enthusiastic collaborators.

The general public will have the rare opportunity to try the fascinating Music Toys firsthand when they are on exhibit at the Cooper-Hewitt/Smithsonian Museum "National Design Triennial" from April 23, 2003 through February 2004. And starting in Fall 2003, Music Toys will be available to everyone through Fisher-Price.

All the elements of Toy Symphony converge at the free culminating concerts in each host city. A multicultural audience that includes children and families are eyewitness to the inspiring work that Toy Symphony's participating children have prepared.

Saturday, April 26, the U.S. premiere performance of Toy Symphony takes place at MIT's spectacular Eero Saarinen-designed Kresge Auditorium as part of the Boston Cyberarts Festival.

Saturday, May 17, the New York premiere of Toy Symphony takes place at the newly renovated Winter Garden of the World Financial Center (with its unparalleled audio and theatrical infrastructure) as part of the Vectors Festival. There is a special Family Day on Sunday, May 18, where everyone can test-drive Beatbugs, Shapers, and Hyperscore themselves.

The Toy Symphony concert program is framed by two new Tod Machover compositions: his shimmery Sparkler for Hyperorchestra, and the rousing finale Toy Symphony. The balance of the program features a group of remarkable pieces for, with, and by children, including: Nerve for eight Beatbug players by Gili Weinberg, a PhD student at the MIT Media Lab (BBC Music Magazine called Nerve a "teasing, balletic, rhythmic game of catch"); the subtly cinematic Nature Suite for four Shapers and Orchestra by Jean-Pascal Beintus, a young French composer; a New Work for Shapers and soloists by award-winning 12-year old composer Natasha Sinha; and premieres of Hyperscore Pieces by children from Boston and New York.

In both concerts, charismatic conductor Gil Rose leads the adventurous and youthful Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), one of the country's few orchestras dedicated entirely to the performance of contemporary classical music. Both concerts also feature the American debut of Ireland's 20-year old violin superstar Cora Venus Lunny who will show off the new Hyperviolin with music by Machover and (Hyper-) Paganini. Lunny, a remarkably versatile musician who is currently working with Sinead O'Connor, was the Hyperviolin soloist for the World Premiere of Toy Symphony with Kent Nagano and the Deutsche-Symphonie Berlin in February 2002.

In time for the U.S. Toy Symphony events, Tod Machover's latest CD—his Hyperstring Trilogy—will be launched in April 2003 by the dynamic new record company Oxingale. The 70-minute Trilogy has been recognized as one of Machover's most important works. Loosely based on the dramatic and psychological sweep of Dante's Divine Comedy, it explores loss and gain, pain and recovery, despair and hope and, in passing, what is lost and gained by technology. This new recording features gripping performances by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project and guest soloists Matt Haimovitz (hypercello), Kim Kashkashian (hyperviola), and Ani Kavafian (hyperviolin).

Hyperstring Trilogy comprises three pieces written for orchestra and hyperinstruments (specially designed musical instruments enhanced and expanded using technology, invented by Machover and his team at the Media Lab in 1986): Begin Again Again for Hypercello, written for Yo-Yo Ma and premiered by him at the Tanglewood Festival in 1991; Song of Penance for Hyperviola and Chamber Orchestra, premiered by Kim Kashkashian and the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1992; and Forever and Ever, premiered in 1993 by Ani Kavafian and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra.

Writing about Hyperstring Trilogy, Pulitzer Prize winning music critic Lloyd Schwartz says: "What is most exciting about Machover's pieces is how beautiful and moving they are, what lyrical and exotic melismas keep surfacing (and how scintillatingly they contrast with the shattering electronic textures), how dramatically they build, how they haven't a dull moment, and what magnificent opportunities for performers they provide."

Machover's growing discography includes the recent CD of his opera Resurrection, which received wide critical acclaim in 2002, including a 'Best of the Year' from Opera News.

TOD MACHOVER is widely recognized as one of the most imaginative and inventive composers of his generation. Recently called "brilliantly gifted" by the New York Times and "America's most wired composer" by the Los Angeles Times, Machover's music breaks traditional musical boundaries, combining richly layered textures with immediate impact, sophisticated orchestration with rock-like rhythms, and offering melodies that are subtly intricate but always memorable. Known for his diverse and influential operas (including VALIS, Brain Opera, and Resurrection) and solo and chamber music for virtuosic musicians, Machover is also an inventor of radical new technologies for music, including his Hyperinstruments, which expand musical expression and creativity for professionals and amateurs alike. Machover's music has been commissioned and performed by many of the world's leading orchestras and ensembles and has received numerous prizes and awards. He is currently working on several new opera projects, and with collaborators such as poet Robert Pinsky, directors Diane Paulus and Braham Murray, and robot designer Cynthia Breazeal. Machover is Professor of Music & Media at the MIT Media Lab.

THE MIT MEDIA LABORATORY is an international leader in the development of innovative digital media and information technologies, and boasts a uniquely flexible, non-hierarchical organization, designed to encourage unconventional and counter-intuitive thinking. Housed in an award-winning I.M.Pei building, the Media Lab is currently expanding into a major new addition designed by Pritzker Prize-winning Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki, and has also launched satellite labs in Dublin (Media Lab Europe) and Bombay (Media Lab Asia). Always a hotbed of innovative artistic expression, the Media Lab is increasingly developing technologies and concepts that foster creativity—empowering people of all ages, from all walks of life, in all societies, to design and invent new possibilities for themselves and the communities around them.

Since 1996, BOSTON MODERN ORCHESTRA PROJECT (BMOP) has quickly established itself as one of America's most original, and most consistently excellent, musical groups. Through creative programming, audience outreach, and auxiliary recording projects, the orchestra has developed a dedicated and diverse following, as well as links to local cultural and social groups not served by other artistic institutions. A six-time winner of the ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming of Orchestral Music, BMOP has been presented by the FleetBoston Celebrity Series, Tanglewood, and the Boston Cyberarts Festival, and has performed at such venues as Jordan Hall, Symphony Hall, New York's Miller Theatre, and Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall.

Praised by the Boston Globe for conducting "with sureness of purpose and delight in the wonder of things," GIL ROSE is the founding Artistic Director of the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. Known as a champion of new orchestral music, Mr. Rose has premiered dozens of new pieces and worked on recordings with composers such as Arthur Berger, Lee Hyla, Steven Mackey, Tod Machover, Bernard Rands, George Rochberg, and Gunther Schuller. Active as a guest conductor, Mr. Rose has led the West Bohemian Symphony Orchestra in the Czech Republic, the Warsaw Philharmonic, the National Symphony Orchestra of the Ukraine, the American Composers Orchestra in New York, the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra Chamber Players. He was selected as a participant in the 1992 and 1995 Concours International de Jeunes Chefs d'Orchestre in Besançon, France.

The daughter of legendary Irish musician Donal Lunny, CORA VENUS LUNNY is a violinist of remarkable accomplishment and great promise. Based in Dublin, Ms. Lunny gave her concert debut there at age five, and studied with master teachers in Paris, Moscow, and Vienna. Ms. Lunny has made the successful transition "from prodigy to consummate professional" (Sunday Business Post), with "playing of a truly inspirational order" (Irish Times). Ms. Lunny specializes in Russian music, adventurous new work, as well as high-visibility projects such as her violin solo role on Sinead O'Connor's new album, Hummingbird Buzz. In addition, she launched a new chamber orchestra—I Fiori—in 2002, for which she serves as conductor and violin soloist. Ms. Lunny was the Hyperviolin soloist for the World Premiere of Toy Symphony with Kent Nagano and the Deutsche-Symphonie Berlin in February 2002, and her Boston and New York performances of the work mark her first appearances in the United States.