The celebrated Kronos Quartet will give the first public presentation of Tod Machover’s new composition—GAMMIFIED—for string quartet and electronics, written for the Kronos as part of their ambitious Fifty for the Future commissioning project with Carnegie Hall. 

The Kronos and Machover will discuss the work, which incorporates state-of-the-art research at MIT into Gamma frequencies that show remarkable promise for resynching the brain and promoting mental wellbeing. Alexandra Rieger, Nikhil Singh, and Ben Bloomberg, graduate students from the Opera of the Future group, will also participate in the discussion. In addition, the Kronos will talk about their extensive experience commissioning and performing some of the world’s most exciting and revolutionary music.

For 45 years, San Francisco’s Kronos Quartet has pursued a singular artistic vision, combining a spirit of fearless exploration with a commitment to continually reimagine the string quartet experience. In the process, Kronos has become one of the most celebrated and influential groups of our time, performing thousands of concerts worldwide, releasing more than 60 recordings of extraordinary breadth and creativity, collaborating with many of the world's most accomplished composers and performers, and commissioning more than 1,000 works and arrangements for string quartet. Kronos has received over 40 awards, including both the Polar Music and Avery Fisher Prize, two of the most prestigious awards given to musicians. In 2018, the group became the first US-based musicians to receive the WOMEX (World Music Expo) Artist Award. 

Composer-inventor Tod Machover is Muriel R. Cooper Professor of Music and Media at the MIT Media Lab, where he directs the Opera of the Future group. His music covers an unusually wide range, from acoustic to electronic, physical to robotic, expressive to therapeutic, and from intimate solo works to symphonies for and with entire cities. Machover’s most recent opera, Schoenberg in Hollywood, premiered with Boston Lyric Opera in November 2018, and travels to the Vienna Volksoper in the 2019/2020 season. He is currently working on new City Symphonies for Chennai (India) and for Boston’s HUBweek, and on a Symphony for the Koreas to connect South and North Korea in new ways. He is also starting work on his next opera.

For further information about this event, please contact Priscilla Capistrano at priscill@media.mit.edu. This appearance by the Kronos Quartet is made possible through generous funding from the MIT Media Lab and from MIT’s CAST (Center for Art, Science and Technology).