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Extending expression, learning, and health through innovations in musical composition, performance, and participation

Opera of the Future

The Opera of the Future Group develops new technologies for music, from Hyperinstruments that enhance performance expressivity for virtuosi and amateurs, to Hyperscore that uses simple lines and colors to open musical creativity for young people, to numerous sonic strategies for promoting wellbeing and combatting disease, to radical and rewarding applications of musical AI, to “City Symphonies” that build community on a massive scale through collaborative sonic creation. The group is also celebrated for creating and producing groundbreaking operas including the AI-infused VALIS (1987; revised 2023), the audience-interactive Brain Opera (1996), and the robotic Death and the Powers (2010), finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Schoenberg in Hollywood (2018) was recently performed in both Los Angeles and Shenzhen, China. The group’s director, Professor Tod Machover, is currently working on a next opera, The Overstory, based on Richard Powers’ Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about the relationship between humans and the non-human world which will premiere at Boston Lyric Opera in early 2028. Machover is also working on a major commission for the Boston Symphony Orchestra — employing many innovative techniques for live AI interaction to explore “the future of democracy" —that will premiere at Symphony Hall in October 2026.