Andrea Shea

Inventor and MIT Media Lab composer Todd McOver has been merging music with cutting-edge technology for decades, from a hyper cello for Yo-Yo Ma to a robot opera to his new collaboration between the Boston Symphony Orchestra and AI.

WBUR's Andrea Shea reports on that experimental collaboration, which premieres tonight for the Media Lab's 40th anniversary.

This is Todd Macover playing his cello at the MIT Media Lab, where he's a founding faculty member.

And this is what his new AI system does with the sounds.

I am expecting all kinds of reactions.

Macover also hopes people can forget about the technology and just experience how the music makes them feel.

For 90.9 WBUR, I'm Andrea Shea.

But a 40-year-old recording studio in Cambridge recently put their computers aside so musicians could experience the wonders of old school reel-to-reel tape.

WBUR's Andrea Shea finds out why.

Q Division Studio's main tech, Michael Healy, is gently threading a strip of two-inch wide analog tape from one big metal reel to another.

So this machine that we have here, this is the only machine currently in service for two-inch 24-track.