New World Symphony to Launch Project 305

New World Symphony, America's Orchestral Academy (NWS), will begin crowdsourcing audio and video content for Project 305, an initiative to create a collaborative symphonic work that reflects the city of Miami through the eyes and ears of its residents. Composer TEd Hearne and filmmaker Jonathan David Kane will lead the project, working closely with the MIT Media Lab and Tod Machover, whose previous crowdsourced City Symphonies serve as the foundation for this collaborative work. By incorporating video from the public in addition to audio, Project 305 marks a new development in the collaborative symphony concept. NWS will be accepting submissions from Miami residents from January 31 through May 12, 2017, and the new work will be premiered on Saturday, October 21, 2017 at a WALLCAST concert conducted by NWS Artistic Director and co-founder Michael Tilson Thomas, with subsequent presentations to follow in communities and neighborhoods throughout Miami. The project is made possible through support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Project 305 is modeled after the collaborative City Symphonies created around the world by Mr. Machover. Blending technology, music, and culture, Mr. Machover has produced these works in cities as diverse as Lucerne, Perth, and Toronto, and a City Symphony was brought to the United States and Detroit by the Knight Foundation. NWS will work with Mr. Machover and the MIT Media Lab to bring this concept to Miami under the creative leadership of Mr. Hearne and Mr. Kane, who will shape the music and visuals respectively. Mr. Hearne will build on a history of composing collaborative, multidisciplinary works, while Mr. Kane brings experience crafting cinematic experiences across a range of live and fixed media. Through their contributions, and by working with Mr. Machover and the MIT Media Lab to newly incorporate video from the public, NWS aims to fully represent the rich cultural and natural diversity of Miami.

"This project allows residents to participate in a creative experience using the tools they carry with them every day - their phones and mobile devices," said Victoria Rogers, vice president for arts at the Knight Foundation. "Living in Miami is always a sensory experience. We're excited to discover which sounds and sites participants are moved to record."

NWS will invite people in Miami communities to work alongside Mr. Hearne, Mr. Kane, and Mr. Machover at workshops and other local events designed to help the public capture and produce sound and video submissions for the project. In capturing the sights and sounds of the city, residents will be asked to draw from their own personal experiences of living in Miami, submitting creations of their own or responding to questions such as: "What's a typical day in Miami? What's your favorite Miami moment? What's a sound or sight that represents home?" Among the tools and resources that will be made available are the Project 305 website (project305.org), which will offer tutorials, apps, and a portal for submissions; an MIT-designed iPhone and Android app for submitting audio and video clips; and MIT Media Lab software that enables users to compose and remix music for the project. On Monday, December 12, NWS will host an introductory event in Miami for attendees to learn about the project and meet project organizers.

Additional project details will be announced in late January 2017.

Composer, singer, and bandleader TEd Hearne (b.1982, Chicago) draws on a wide breadth of influences ranging across music's full terrain, to create intense, personal, and multi-dimensional works. The New York Times has praised Mr. Hearne for his "tough edge and wildness of spirit" and "topical, politically sharp-edged works." Pitchfork called Mr. Hearne's work "some of the most expressive socially engaged music in recent memory - from any genre." Mr. Hearne's newest theatrical work, The Source, sets text from the Iraq and Afghanistan War Logs, along with words by Chelsea Manning (the U.S. Army private who leaked those classified documents to WikiLeaks) and was premiered to rave reviews in October 2014 at the BAM Next Wave Festival in Brooklyn. The New York Times called The Source "a 21st Century masterpiece" and included it on its list of the best classical vocal performances of 2014 and best albums of 2015, noting that the work "offers a fresh model of how opera and musical theater can tackle contemporary issues: not with documentary realism, but with ambiguity, obliquity, and even sheer confusion." The Source was recently performed at the LA Opera in October 2016, and upcoming performances can be seen at the San Francisco Opera in February-March 2017. Web site: tedhearne.com

Jonathan David Kane (b.1984, Miami) combines light and sound to convey narratives. Over the past decade, he has contributed to numerous fiction, documentary, and experimental short and feature films, series content for television and the web, and interdisciplinary performance art. Mr. Kane's work as a film director, producer, and cinematographer has screened at festivals and museums worldwide including Sundance, SXSW, Toronto International, Rotterdam, Sheffield Doc Fest, Clermont-Ferrand, the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow, Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans, the MoMA in New York, and the Brooklyn Museum. Web site: jonathandavidkane.com

Tod Machover (b. 1953, New York) has been called a "musical visionary" by The New York Times and "America's most wired composer" by the Los Angeles Times. He is Muriel R. Cooper Professor of Music & Media at the MIT Media Lab, where he also directs the Opera of the Future Group. Mr. Machover is widely recognized as one of the world's most significant and innovative composers, and is also celebrated for inventing new technology for music, including Hyperinstruments that expand expressivity and creativity for both virtuosi and amateurs, and video games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band, which grew out of this Lab. Mr. Machover's compositions have been commissioned and performed by many of the world's most prestigious ensembles and soloists, and his work has been awarded numerous prizes and honors worldwide, including a "Chevalier of Arts and Letters" from the French government, the inaugural Arts Advocacy Award from The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and the award for "2016 Composer of the Year" by Musical America. He is particularly known for his groundbreaking operas, including the "robotic" Death and the Powers that was Finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize. Web site: todmachover.com

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation's belief in equitable, inclusive, and participatory communities has driven inventive and creative programs in Miami and other Knight cities. Through previous partnerships with the New World Symphony, the Knight Foundation has been instrumental in the development of innovative programming such as WALLCAST concerts, Pulse: Late Night at the New World Symphony, the annual Network Performing Arts Production Workshops (NPAPW), and video commissions and presentations at the New World Center. Web site: knightfoundation.org

Actively promoting a unique, antidisciplinary culture, the MIT Media Lab goes beyond known boundaries and disciplines, encouraging the most unconventional mixing and matching of seemingly disparate research areas. It creates disruptive technologies that happen at the edges, pioneering such areas as wearable computing, tangible interfaces, and affective computing. Today, faculty members, research staff, and students at the Lab work in 25 research groups on more than 350 projects that aim to radically improve the way people live, learn, express themselves, work, and play. In this spirit, future-obsessed roboticists, nanotechnologists, biologists, neuroscientists, data-visualization experts, industry researchers, pioneers of computer interfaces, and artist-designer activists work side by side to tirelessly invent-and reinvent-how humans experience, and can be aided by, technology, and to make sure that developments are deployed throughout the world for maximum benefit to individuals and societies. Web site: media.mit.edu

Additional information about the New World Symphony, America's Orchestral Academy, is available at NWS.edu.

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