ART, PERFORMANCES & CONVERSATIONS

All New Center programs speak to Jewish audiences and to the broader community. Attracting large and diverse groups of people, our past programs have explored wide-ranging themes and ideas, including: the Exodus story told from multiple cultural perspectives; the blending of Klezmer and swing music; and the influence of a Jewish up-bringing on the lives and careers of acclaimed writers, artists, musicians, actors, political figures and humorists.

We invite everyone to come and experience the insight, passion, humanity, and humor that lie at the heart of our programs.

I Sing the Body Electric

Date:

Tuesday December 7, 2010
7:30 PM

Venue:

Arsenal Center for the Arts - Charles Mosesian Theater
321 Arsenal Street, Watertown, MA

 I Sing the Body Electric

Composer Tod Machover and poet Robert Pinsky talk about making art in the age of new technology. Hailed as “America’s most wired composer,” Machover is transforming classical music and opera, mixing cocktails of music, dance, theater, and high-tech brilliance. His experiments include a “magic” opera for Penn and Teller, The Brain Opera, and now Death and the Powers: The Robots’ Opera, which will have its American premiere in Boston in 2011. Robert Pinsky, who wrote the libretto for Machover’s new opera, has embraced “the muse in the machine” like few other writers. He has described poetry as an “ancient technology” and has even written a “computerized” novel, but he has also cautioned that the ultimate scene of poetry is the human breath and the human ear. Former Poet Laureate of the United States, Pinsky is the poetry editor of Slate and the author of numerous collections of poetry. Machover, professor of music and media at MIT, is also an inventor of ground-breaking new music technologies.

They will talk with Boston Phoenix music critic and poet Lloyd Schwartz about art, technology and how poetry and music continue to shape what it means to be human.