The word Ba, represented by a bee-sign in hieroglyphs, meant ‘soul,’ ‘honey’ and ‘bee’ to Ancient Egyptians. This ancient commingling of our fate with bees isn’t lost on MIT assistant professor of theater arts Charlotte Brathwaite, whose new project Bee … Continued
MIT’s Nicholas Negroponte predicted in 1995 that “being digital” would have us entering a realm increasingly unconstrained by the materiality of the world. Two decades later, our everyday lives are indeed ever more suffused by computation and calculation. But unwieldy … Continued
When I was an art student in New York in 1999, David Bowie visited our school and offered to host images of our work on BowieNet, an ISP he had launched the previous year. Glimpsing Bowie was enough to blow … Continued
Back in the mid-90s, the Brazilian-born singer Luciana Souza, who was living in Boston at the time, would sometimes drive down to New York to sit in on a Monday night session at the legendary Smalls Jazz Club in Greenwich … Continued
The program for this year’s MIT Symphony Orchestra concert can be traced back to the day that John Harbison first encountered the music of Joseph Haydn. “I was a string player as a kid. I played violin, but I wanted … Continued
A productive artist residency generally provides the yin to an artist’s yang. If daily life is distracting, for example, an artist may relish solitude. If, on the other hand, the artist is Jacob Collier, a self-contained singer-songwriter-performer-composer-arranger-producer who mostly works … Continued
PUBLIC PERFORMANCE Maya Beiser and the Ambient Orchestra perform David Bowie’s Blackstar March 3, 2017 / 7:30pm MIT Kresge Auditorium, W16 48 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA It has been just over a year since the news of David Bowie’s … Continued
The day the two members of duoJalal met in 1998 marked a convergence of musical worlds. Violist Kathryn Lockwood had launched a career in chamber music, while Yousif Sheronick excelled in a gamut-spanning array of percussive traditions, from Brazilian folk … Continued
When he was young, the Swiss pianist and composer Nik Bärtsch was obsessed with rhythm. Once, when his father brought him along to a party, he spent the whole evening drumming on an ashtray. Nowadays he is apt to reach … Continued
A Study in Contrast? If you want to know what the upcoming 2016-17 season of MIT’s Sounding Series is all about, you need look no further than its two inaugural concerts in September 2016. The first, a performance by the … Continued
After cruel April’s deluge of exams and critiques, May brings showers of praise. Now is the jubilant time in the academic calendar when the Council for the Arts at MIT recognizes the achievements of the Institute’s student artists with the … Continued
When he was six years old, Daniel Parker saw his sister perform in a choir concert. Afterward, he sat down at the piano and began to sound out the what her ensemble had sung. “When my mom saw that, she … Continued
It’s easy, watching Pamela Z perform, to get distracted by her gadgets: the MIDI controllers strapped to her hands like bionic appendages, the ultrasound-activated box that sings when her fingers flutter past, the laptop with its glowing screen. But if … Continued
It is often said that Morton Feldman’s “String Quartet II” is an experiment in scale. That is a fancy way of saying that the piece is very, very long—approximately six hours. The players—perhaps better described as marathoners—cannot eat or relieve … Continued
CAST presents a variety of workshops, exhibitions and lectures this Spring, and we hope you will join us for some of these scintillating events! McDermott Awardee David Adjaye will visit campus for a series of discussions on “The Future of the Library,” “The … Continued
The words “school” and “leisure” are etymologically linked, yet it is all too easy to forget this association of learning with enjoyment, given all the beastly competition in academe and the unremitting pressure to keep up your GPA. The Independent … Continued
Tomás Saraceno: Arachnid Orchestra. Jam Sessions Arachnid Orchestra. Jam Sessions, on view from October 23, 2015 to December 20, 2015 at Nanyang Technological University Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, is a new production by CAST Visiting Artist Tomás Saraceno that … Continued
Johann Sebastian Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin are Shakespearian in their iconicity. Every serious performer must subject them to study, memorizing a monologue or, in this case, a movement, tracing and retracing the familiar, fleet-footed phrases in the … Continued
Tod Machover, Muriel R. Cooper Professor at the MIT Media Lab, has been named 2016 Composer of the Year by Musical America, the prestigious classical music publication. Joining the ranks of such illustrious composers as John Luther Adams, Meredith Monk, William Bolcom, Osvaldo Golijov, Arvo Pärt, George Crumb, … Continued
Maya Beiser’s recent album of classic rock covers, cheekily titled “Uncovered,” may come as a surprise to those who know her as a daring cellist primarily focused on new classical works. But the Israeli-born soloist (she now resides in New … Continued
New music series features Maya Beiser, Johnny Gandelsman, the Persona opera, Feldman’s six-hour string quartet, and Pamela Z. The new music series, MIT Sounding, has announced its 2015 and 2016 schedule of innovative performances by some of the world’s leading … Continued
Michael Render – better known as Killer Mike – is an Atlanta-based rapper, political activist and one half of the popular duo Run the Jewels. Render presented the second lecture in MIT’s Hip Hop Speaker Series, “Race Relations in the … Continued
Hearing Vivaldi’s Spring piped over the stereo at an upscale department store in Chestnut Hill Mall, MIT composer Elena Ruehr had an epiphany. It was winter 1995, and she was working on a piece for strings commissioned by Metamorphosen for their … Continued
A couple familiar red and white bags from the COOP bursting with MIT textbooks sat in a corner of the green room while legendary audio engineer and DJ, Gimel “Young Guru” Keaton, talked to the press before his recent lecture … Continued
Lontano Ensemble: Rowland Sutherland, flute; Peter Furniss, clarinet; Caroline Balding, violin; Clare O’Connell, cello; Mary Dullea, piano; Odaline de la Martinez, conductor. The famed London-based Lontano Ensemble returns to MIT on March 15 to perform works by MIT composers in … Continued