Tod Machover has been called "America's most wired composer" by the Los Angeles Times, and “a Renaissance man for the 22nd century” by The Guardian. He is recognized as one of the most significant and innovative composers of his generation, and is also celebrated for inventing new technology for music, including Hyperinstruments which he launched in 1986. Machover studied with Elliott Carter and Roger Sessions at The Juilliard School and was the first Director of Musical Research at Pierre Boulez's IRCAM in Paris. He is the Muriel R. Cooper Professor of Music and Media at the MIT Media Lab – where he has worked since the Lab was founded in 1985 – and is Director of the its Hyperinstruments and Opera of the Future Groups. Since 2006, Machover has also been Visiting Professor of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Tod Machover's music has been acclaimed for breaking traditional artistic and cultural boundaries, offering a unique and innovative synthesis of acoustic and electronic sound, of symphony orchestras and interactive computers, and of operatic arias and rock songs. Machover's compositions have been commissioned and performed by many of the world's most prestigious ensembles and soloists, including the Ensemble InterContemporain, the London Sinfonietta, Ensemble Modern, Speculum Musicae, BBC Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Boston Pops, Houston Grand Opera, Bunkamura (Tokyo), Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Carnegie Hall, Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Collage New Music, Speculum Musicae, Ars Electronica, Casa da Musica (Porto), American Composers Orchestra, Tokyo String Quartet, Kronos Quartet, Ying Quartet, Yo‐Yo Ma, Joshua Bell, Kim Kashkahian, David Starobin, Matt Haimovitz, and many more. His work has been awarded numerous prizes and honors, among others from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (the Charles Ives Scholarship), the Fromm and Koussevitzky Foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts, the German Culture Ministry, and the French Culture Ministry, which named him a Chevalier de l'Order des Arts et des Lettres. In 2007 he was awarded the Steinmetz Prize from the IEEE, and in 2010 he received the Arts Prize from the World Technology Network (CNN/Time Inc.). Tod Machover is also celebrated for being one of the world’s most prominent innovators in designing new technologies for music performance and creation, such as Hyperinstruments, “smart” performance systems that extend expression for some of the great virtuosi, from Yo‐Yo Ma to Prince., as well as to ensembles and symphony orchestras like the Deutsche Symphonie Berlin. He has also designed Hyperinstruments for the general public, from young people to families to seniors and the disabled, and leads a growing Music, Mind and Health program at MIT with collaborators such as Yamaha and the Cleveland Clinic. The popular videogames Guitar Hero and Rock Band grew out of Machover’s Lab. His Hyperscore software (http://www.hyperscore.com)—which allows anyone to compose original music using lines and colors—has allowed children around the world to have their music performed by major orchestras as part of Machover’s Toy Symphony project. In awarding Machover the first Kurzweil Prize in Music and Technology in 2003, inventor and entrepreneur Raymond Kurzweil wrote: "Tod Machover is the only person I am aware of who contributes on a world‐class level to both the technology of music creation and to music itself. Even within these two distinct areas, his contributions are remarkably diverse, and of exquisite quality." Machover is also known for his visionary operas, including VALIS (based on Philip K. Dick’s sci‐fi classic); The Brain Opera (which invites the audience to collaborate live and online); Skellig, which premiered in the UK in November 2008 to rave reviews; and the “robotic” Death and the Powers which premiered in Monaco—under the patronage of Prince Albert II—and the U.S. in the 2010/2011 season, and has been called “grand, rich and deeply serious” (Opera) and “highly imaginative and compelling (Boston GloBe). Powers was a Finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in Music. Tod Machover is currently composing a new work for the Toronto Symphony for which he has invited the whole city of Toronto to collaborate. This “Concerto for Composer and City” will premiere in March 2013 (http://toronto.media.mit.edu). Tod Machover's music is published by Boosey & Hawkes and Ricordi Editions, and has been recorded on the Bridge, Oxingale, Erato, Albany and New World labels. .