Fwd: Marvin Minsky Update:: Music Symposium Background

Dear Jeffrey, Here is background on the Music Symposium in October. You can see how our publication energy surrounding Marvin's music has led to this intellectual gathering.

We have gathered advisors to help us put this together. Not only do we hope that you participate on Oct 29, and at the speakers' pre-dinner on Oct 28, we especially welcome your ideas for how to tune this up to be the best it can be. We are expecting a great combination of senior academics and artists along with the finest students.

As of now, sponsors include Stanford, MIT, the World Wide Workshop Foundation, and we are almost ready to announce CASIO as a sponsor.

Reconstructing Beethoven's Improvisations is an invitational Symposium with five to seven top experts who are equipped to re-imagine, reconstruct, and imagine beyond Beethoven's improvised music.

The agenda of the workshop is to: understand the mind; in particular how improvisation informs us about music and mind. understand improvisation's role in musical genius, journeyman music, and the roles and skills of musicians. reconstruct or reimagine Beethoven's improvising, which he was known to do frequently both in public and private. reconstruct or reimagine the relationship of Beethoven's improvisation process to his composition process. discuss and play with ideas about improvisation, thinking, and learning.

Marvin Minsky's ideas about thinking, his life in music as a classical improvisor, and his paper "Music, Mind and Meaning", are inspirations for this symposium.

The music world and popular conception of Beethoven seem to be moving away from the former caricature of Beethoven as an angry, lonely genius toward a more nuanced view: that Beethoven was a driven artist with a loyal pack of friends and active social life. Some go further and take the view that he invented many of the 20th century music ideas (and then some).

The Symposium will take place Oct 29, 2014. The venue will be the MIT Media Lab Complex, Amherst St, Cambridge, MA, USA.

A small (about 50) participatory audience of faculty, performers, and graduate students will be invited to attend.

Hosts:

Prof. Tod Machover, Muriel R. Cooper Professor of Music and Media, MIT Media Lab Prof. Jonathan Berger, The Denning Family Provostial Professor in Music, Stanford University

Presenters:

• Jonathan Biss, Prof. Curtis Institute, Internationally acclaimed concert pianist recording cycle of Beethoven Sonatas, successful Coursera MOOC on Beethoven Sonatas • Noam Elkies, Chair, Harvard Math Dept. and Juillard graduate, • Robert Levin, former chair, Harvard Music Dept., leading classical improviser • Marvin Minsky, MIT Professor, AI founder, Improvisor • Stephen Prutsman, San Francisco, Pianist and Improvisor • Jan Swafford, Prof of Composition Boston Conservatory, music biographer, author of biography to be published Aug 5, 2014, "Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph"

Advisors:

• Margaret Minsky, Multimedia Consultant

• Jonathan Berger, Stanford

• Cynthia Solomon, Educational Technology Consultant

• Teresa Marrin Nakra, Associate Professor of Music, The College of New Jersey.

• Michael Hawley, EG Conference Leader, First Place Van Cliburn Competition, Explorer

• Tom Vignieri, Composer, Music Director of NPR's "From the Top" Radio Show

• Tod Machover, MIT

Sent from my iPhone