Boston gets a world premiere tonight. On Thursday, October 22 at 7:30 p.m., conductor Kent Nagano leads the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Symphony Hall in the first performance of already and not yet, a brand-new BSO commission by Tod Machover — the visionary composer and inventor who serves as faculty director of the MIT Media Lab.
What makes this premiere unlike any other is a musical partner you cannot see. The work incorporates a live AI system that collaborates with each BSO musician in real time, creating surprising links and blends across the orchestra. Machover calls the result “a possible, positive vision” for the future of democracy: many individual voices, listening to one another and finding harmony together. The concerts anchor the BSO’s Technology and Our Humanity week, a multi-season exploration of how technology is reshaping music and ourselves, arriving as the MIT Media Lab celebrates its 40th anniversary.
The joyful program wraps the premiere in Mendelssohn: it opens with The Hebrides Overture (Fingal’s Cave), adds the U.S. premiere of Alex Nante’s Ein feste Burg, and closes with Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 5, “Reformation.” Performances continue Friday, October 23 at 1:30 p.m. and Saturday, October 24 at 8 p.m.; Saturday ticket holders can also join a 6:30 p.m. pre-concert talk with composer George Lewis and Machover himself.
Photo: Robert Torres / Boston Symphony Orchestra
