Orchestras – Festival City

Last night’s world premiere of “Festival City” went off without a hitch. The Royal Scottish National Orchestra players were on fire, and the acoustics in Usher Hall were excellent. Kudos too to the Edinburgh International Festival audience for their commitment and enthusiasm to new work. Check out this BBC report from the rehearsal, including a video with interviews with Tod Machover and RSNO conductor Peter Oundjian. The entire performance was also recorded and we hope will be broadcast soon. Stay tuned…

Read and watch video here: Edinburgh’s crowdsourced symphony made with MIT apps

Rehearsals have begun

From Tod Machover’s Facebook page:

Exciting first rehearsal yesterday with full orchestra of FESTIVAL CITY. Here’s the Royal Scottish National Orchestra trying out the piece for the first time, in their rehearsal space in Glasgow. On my way back there now for more rehearsing. More pictures soon.

Inside “Festival City” with Wired UK

Wired UK posted this excellent article today that provides an in-depth look at the Festival City project. Included are detailed descriptions of how the music apps work. We loved this:

To compose Festival City, which Machover hopes will bring out the contrasts of the city, Machover first invited people to submit raw material that reminded of them of Edinburgh during festival time. These could be pieces of music, sounds or recorded stories and anecdotes which were submitted by email, uploaded toSoundCloud or recorded on an answering phone. Sounds that particularly stood out for Machover were those of church bells and people talking in the lobbies discussing shows they’d just seen, as well what he describes as an “indie rock band of traffic”, where each of the cars stood out like soloists, rather than just collaborating to a single mass of traffic noise.

Tod is in Edinburgh this week and next, busy fine-tuning and rehearsing “Festival City”, which premieres next Tuesday, August 27th, at the Edinburgh International Festival. Tickets here.

Read the full article: Festival City: Tod Machover on crowdsourcing music with MIT apps for EIF

“Festival City” featured in New York Times

The M.I.T. Media Lab Opera of the Future group’s work is the subject of a full-page article by Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim in the August 16th issue of the New York Times. It’s an engagingly written piece that covers the history of Tod Machover’s work in music composition and technology, from hyperinstruments to “Death and the Powers” to “Festival City”, including a description of the Cauldron app in action. Accompanying the story is a terrific slide show of photographs by Katherine Taylor. Tod’s newest work, “Festival City”, premieres next week, on August 27th, at the Edinburgh International Festival.

Here’s the article: Duet for Composition and Software

Here’s the slide show.

Some helpful articles

Tod Machover was in Edinburgh last week meeting with various musical groups. Pictured with him is a female student from the Gaelic choir and a boy from the teenage bagpipe ensemble. Machover worked with both groups to listen to and then experiment with their sounds.

We’re starting to see some lovely media coverage of the Festival City project. Check out:

The Scotsman – Sounds of Edinburgh to be used in festival symphony – “Birdsong, buskers, traffic and even tramworks could all end up being part of Tod Machover’s crowd-sourced work, Festival City, which he will work on until just shortly before it is premiered. Billed as a “sonic portrait” of the city, it will be unveiled at the Usher Hall in August in a one-off show to be performed by the Royal ScottishNational Orchestra.”

Boston Business Journal – A score for the world’s biggest music fest? There’s an app for that – “Machover said he said he sees Edinburgh as a divided city, with beautiful, 18th Century architecture on one hand, but the historical backdrop for “Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde” and J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” Series. He said that while the Toronto project was “like a journey where it ends up pretty classical,” the Edinburgh music will be different, because he’ll be letting the Cauldron – and everything residents stir into it – to determine its flow. ‘I think this piece may end up being more experimental,” he said. “I don’t want to write a simple melody to tie everything together. What’s going to tie everything together will be the soup.'”

West End Broadway World – 2013 Edinburgh International Festival Launches New ‘Cauldron’ App “With Cauldron we grow closer and closer to the idea of a sonic portrait of Edinburgh. I want Cauldron to give users a feeling akin to standing on top of Arthur’s Seat and absorbing the entire city at once. Having spent time working the RSNO and different school groups across Edinburgh, I’ve been directly inspired by their enthusiasm and energetic input, and am excited to share further the sounds created through Cauldron’.”

Thoroughly Good Blog – Submit material for Tod Machover’s Edinburgh 2013 commission Festival City – This blogger tried out the Constellation and Cauldron apps and offers helpful tips on how to play with them. We’re very happy to know that “seeing and hearing my finished mini-score was a joy to behold both visually and aurally.”

What’s next? Check out the latest app!

The Constellation app is now live! You can start creating your own scores for Festival City. These patterns and collections of sounds will contribute to the next stage of the project. Make sure you keep on submitting your sounds as next Edinburgh Soundscapes will be launching in June and July.

Click here to make your own scores for Festival City!

Join the Festival City digital media campaign!

We’re getting wonderful support from the digital media team at the Edinburgh International Festival! Please help us engage as many people as possible in the “Festival City” project. Here are some of the ways:

Join the Festival City Facebook events page. Then invite your friends to join!
Follow the project on Twitter @ComposerCity and @Edintfest. Use #Edintfestcity to tag tweets related to the project.

Festival City – Get involved!

In this introductory video, composer Tod Machover explains how you can collaborate on creating his new symphonic work. Here’s all you need to do:

Sign up to receive e-alerts about the latest collaborative activities.
Post a comment about your most evocative memories and impressions of Edinburgh. Or share an audio recording via the project’s SoundCloud account.
Over the coming months, pieces of new music will be debuted here. Use our special apps to re-shape these sounds to your liking and share them back.

The Roots of “Festival City”

The idea behind “Festival City” — of inviting a community to collaborate on composing a musical work — developed over many years of musical and technological exploration at the M.I.T. Media Lab, as explained in this article in the Guardian. Composer Tod Machover describes his hopes for “Festival City”:

…he envisages it as a collaboration with anyone who loves the Scottish capital. The work will, he hopes, be a kind of “tone poem” that “feels and sounds like the city and its festivals”. Anyone interested can submit a recording, or simply suggest a particular sound that they associate with the city. Machover adds, somewhat darkly, “It may be hard to imagine avoiding bagpipes completely.” (GuyFromPortugal has already submitted a snippet entitled “The sounds of constant wind”.) From early June, via an app, there will also be the chance for members of the public to manipulate and alter the weight, complexity and texture of melodies composed by Machover, who will use the best in the final piece.

Read the full article here.

Tod Machover at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Photograph: Jean-Claude Dhien/Corbis Outline