Peter Child | Musical Patois: Reflections of Language in Music

Peter Child | Musical Patois: Reflections of Language in Music
March 5, 2011, 2:00-4:00 pm
MIT Kresge Little Theater

A composer, a neurobiologist, a pianist and a computer scientist walk into a lecture hall… You’ll find out what happens next in real time at this discussion/interactive performance exploring the roots and relationships of rhythm and melody in music and language. MIT professor and award-winning composer Peter Child, Aniruddh Patel of the Neuroscience Institute, USC engineering professor and pianist Elaine Chew and computer science researcher Alexandre R.J. François of USC revealed how French and English music are tied to a composer’s native language. They demonstrate their findings with a fascinating variety of human- and computer-generated compositions.

 

 

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Peter Child

Peter Child, Composer and MIT Professor of Music
Moderator of Musical Patois: Reflections of Language in Music
Composer for Language of Music Concert 
Peter Child is Professor of Music at MIT and Composer-in-Residence with the New England Philharmonic. An award-winning composer whose work has been described by reviewers as “feisty,” “highly colored,” “ingenious” and “vaultingly imaginative,” Child has written music in many genres, including music for orchestra, chorus, computer synthesis, voice and chamber ensembles. His work is performed around the world, and was prominently featured in the Lontano Festival of American Music in London in 2006 and 2008 as well as performed by Germany’s United Bernin, Ensemble Lontano, UK’s BBC Singers, Italy’s Interensemble, Australia’s Speak Percussion, the National Symphony Orchestras of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan and various U.S.-based ensembles. A new Child work was premiered at the March 5 concert by London’s famed Lontano Ensemble, as part of the FAST Thinking weekend.