March 9, 2013, approx. 9pm

March 7, 2013 (Toronto, ON) Toronto residents and all those within sight of the CN Tower are invited to watch a unique CN Tower light show synchronized to the world première of A Toronto Symphony: Concerto for Composer and City - the first symphony created for, by and about Torontonians.

Tune in to TSO.CA for a live webcast where you will hear a live audio feed of the concert as well as see visuals, which will include graphics, video, and photos illustrating both the piece and the process of its creation, alongside a live video feed of the CN Tower’s light show. The complete concert is performed live at Roy Thomson Hall on March 9, 2013 beginning 8pm, and the webcast and CN Tower lighting will be live with the A Toronto Symphony: Concerto for Composer and City première at approximately 9pm. 

What does Toronto sound like?  That’s the question that composer Tod Machover and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra have been answering with the help of Torontonians in A Toronto Symphony: Concerto for Composer and City. Led by Machover, and in partnership with the world renowned MIT Media Lab, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra asked Torontonians to collaborate in creating a work for, by, and about our city.

Thousands of Torontonians participated in the work, and collaboration took place by blog (TSO.CA/Composerandcity) and e-mail, via Skype and smartphone, using audio and video recording and streaming, and through numerous face-to-face meetings and music-making sessions in Toronto. In addition, collaborators used Media Scores and Constellation web music apps (developed at the MIT Media Lab specifically for this project) as well as the MIT Media Lab’s Hyperscore graphic composing software to let anyone create original material or make their personal versions of Machover’s work.

“We embarked on an adventure that has led me to new sounds, new friendships, new discoveries about Toronto, and new ideas about musical storytelling,” said Machover. “When I started the project, my hope was to convey how the incredible diversity of Toronto is wrapped in a beautiful and unified connectivity. Having just finished the piece, I think we have achieved that and I can’t wait to share it with Toronto.”

Working in collaboration with the CN Tower, the light show is designed by the MIT Media Lab’s Peter Torpey, who also designed the interactive graphics for the concert hall itself. This light show will visually represent the sounds of  A Toronto Symphony: Concerto for Composer and City and will also be shown on the screens in Roy Thomson Hall alongside live shots of the CN Tower, during the live performance.

“Throughout the year the CN Tower lighting program recognizes citywide events, charitable events and causes, seasons and special holidays,” said Jack Robinson, Chief Operating Officer for the CN Tower.  “We are proud to salute this unique composition about our great city and offer viewers a unique personal connection to the CN Tower, TSO and Toronto.”

TSO Music Director Peter Oundjian leads the World première of A Toronto Symphony: Concerto for Composer and City on March 9 (concert begins at 8:00pm).  Tickets are still available for the performance at TSO.CA or by calling the TSO Box Office at 416-593-4828. Listen to a broadcast of A Toronto Symphony: Concerto for Composer and City on CBC Radio’s In Concert on April 21, 2013.

“Our city needs a symphony,” said TSO Music Director Peter Oundjian. “We live in a great hub of creativity, diversity and innovation, and this is the right time to reflect the endless colours and sounds of the city through orchestral instruments.”

Tod Machover

Tod Machover is recognized as one of the world’s most imaginative and influential composers, and is also known for his music technology inventions, from a “hypercello” for Yo-Yo Ma to the innovations behind Guitar Hero. In addition to composing boundary-breaking works for instruments and electronics, Machover seeks ways to actively involve the public in music-making, through projects like his interactive Brain Opera or the Hyperscore composing software system. He is also celebrated for his innovative operas, including the “robotic” Death and the Powers which was Finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize. www.todmachover.com and http://opera.media.mit.edu

TSO’s New Creations Festival

This special Toronto Symphony Orchestra performance is part of the TSO’s annual New Creations Festival.  Heralded by the New York Times as “the orchestra’s signal success in the handling of contemporary music”, the New Creations Festival showcases the hottest works in contemporary orchestral music. On stage at Roy Thomson Hall, Mar 2 – 9, 2013. newcreationsfestival.com

TSO

Founded in 1922, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra is one of Canada’s major cultural institutions and is internationally recognized as a leading orchestra. Under the leadership of Music Director Peter Oundjian, the TSO is committed to innovative programming and showcases a roster of distinguished guest artists and conductors. In addition to performances, the TSO serves the community with one of the largest music education outreach programmes amongst North American orchestras, connecting students throughout Ontario with acclaimed curriculum-based programming. TSO.CA

CN Tower

Defining the Toronto skyline, at a height of 553.33m (1,815 ft., 5 inches), the CN Tower is Canada’s National Tower, an engineering Wonder and Toronto’s must see attraction visited by over 1.5 million people annually.  Open daily 9 am – 10 pm. With the installation of innovative, energy efficient programmable LED exterior lighting, the CN Tower literally lights up the Toronto skyline each night vividly illuminating the structure in Canada’s official colours of red and white.

Information: (416) 868-6937

www.cntower.ca

Media inquiries:

·         CN Tower -  Irene Knight, Manager of Public Relations, 416-601-4729, iknight@cntower.ca

·         Toronto Symphony Orchestra – Laura Quinn, Senior Manager of Communications, 416-593-7769 x232, lquinn@TSO.CA

I wanted to share some recent stories in the press that nicely capture what this whole journey has been about. I thought the following articles were particularly well done. Enjoy!

• Boston Globe - Sounds of a city: A new template for collaboration in Toronto
• Toronto Life – Found Sounds
• Musical Toronto - Toronto school children become engaged composers in Toronto Symphony experiment
• International Arts Manager magazine: Electric dreams: Composer and inventor Tod Machover on music and participatory practice

I look forward to meeting you at the premiere!

- Tod

About the “A Toronto Symphony” project (video).

Reserve your tickets now.

- Tod

The “City Soaring” section of A Toronto Symphony starts the third and final section of the piece and comes just before the “Toronto Dances” Finale, which many of you have been manipulating with Media Scores. I will be very interested to see what kinds of color and texture you decide to make with “City Soaring”, and I will listen to your versions as I create my own for the piece, which I am working on at this very moment.

This “City Soaring” app is very exciting and fun to use, but it is also subtle and sophisticated. It will take some trial and error to really get the feel of it. Peter Torpey is a master at shaping beautiful pieces by using it, and we’ll post a video next week with Peter showing some techniques and tricks for getting the most out of the app. In the meantime, you can check out Peter’s version of “City Soaring.” You can also find more tips about how to use this app by clicking on HELP (?) in the top right hand corner of the app window.

One more thing: This “City Soaring” app should work with both Chrome and Safari 6.0.1 (and higher) browsers, although some have had trouble using it with Safari because of incompatible graphics standards on some machines. Chrome should always work, so we recommend that you go with that.

So go ahead and paint a melody! I can’t wait to hear what you create, and also can’t wait to share finished bits and pieces of A Toronto Symphony with you over the next days and weeks.

Happy New Year, and thanks so much to all of you for your help and collaboration.

Tod

Note: If you’re using Safari and the links don’t work, you can copy and paste them into Chrome:

• City Soaring http://toronto.media.mit.edu/scores/soaring/
• Peter’s version of “City Soaring”

  http://toronto.media.mit.edu/scores/soaring/play/50df3a63ace02

• Media Scores http://toronto.media.mit.edu/scores/finale/

Now I want to show you a brand new app. It’s called Constellation. You’ll be able to experiment with it between now and the beginning of January. It was designed and written by Media Lab graduate student Akito van Troyer. I’ve taken some of the music I’ve composed for A Toronto Symphony, as well as many of the recorded sounds you’ve sent in. Constellation allows us to put those sounds up on the screen and mix them into your own collages, textures and pieces, just by experimenting with moving the mouse and combining these things. I’d love it if you’d go out and try it. Your collages and textures will give me new ideas about how to combine all the musical elements of the piece, and what you do might very well become a part of “A Toronto Symphony”…..which I am composing and collating at this very moment.

When you go into Constellation, there are three different types of sounds you can play with: Toronto Samples, Chords and Launch Music.

1. Samples. Each dot is one sound. Akito’s software takes masses of sound recorded throughout Toronto and breaks them up and organizes them based on which ones are most similar. If you drag the mouse around, you not only hear different sounds, but different parts of the city. So as you explore this, you can try to imagine where the sounds are from. There are five different ways that Akito’s analysis organizes these sounds: quality of sound, change over time, how loud they are, etc.You can record sounds by going to the Draw tool, clicking on it, and then dragging it around the field of dots. If you move the mouse very slowly, you can hone in on one sound. The faster you move, the more different sounds open up. That’s easy to control. Then you “upload” your score. It asks you to sign your masterpiece, and then it uploads it. It’s then available for me and anyone else in the community to listen to. I invite you to explore the sounds, try the five different ways you can look at them, and make your own version.
2. Chords – Contains all the main chord progressions. All these chords were recorded by the Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra. Akito’s analysis has put them into bead-like rows. You can listen to the chords one at a time or blur them together. And you can make a totally different kind of harmonic piece and decide the kind of story that’s being told. It’s amazing how chords – even strange ones like mine – can give a sense of direction, of continuity, of “journey.”
3. Launch Music – This is based on the first finished bit of music I wrote for A Toronto Symphony. Musicians of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra joined with me at the Idea City conference to perform this. We fed the six minutes into Akito’s system, and it broke it that music up into little fragments. I am particularly enjoying  how these very diverse chunks and tidbits of sound can convey multiple feelings and meanings depending on how the intertwine one with the other.

I am finding this app kind of addictive. Hope you do too, and I’d love it if you’d give it a try. You can make your own pieces, send them into the community, remix other people’s music, and so on. And tell your family and friends about it over the holiday. The more the merrier!

Happy Holidays, and have fun making, mixing and mashing this music.

- Tod Machover, Composer/Collaborator – A Toronto Symphony

Try Constellation now!

Read our first blog post and learn more about A Toronto Symphony here.
Find news stories and press coverage of A Toronto Symphony here.