Michael Century | Music at Noon

Name: Michael Century | Music at Noon
Start: 2026-02-10T12:00:00-05:00
Location: 32 2nd St, Troy, NY, United States, New York 12180

Schedule

Tue, 10 Feb, 2026 at 12:00 pm

UTC-05:00

Location

32 2nd St, Troy, NY, United States, New York 12180 | Troy, NY

Michael Century, pianist, accordionist, and cultural historian, is Professor of New Media and Music in the Arts Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He combines a passion for experimentation with an abiding commitment to the renewal of classical traditions in our age of burgeoning “artificial creativity.” His scholarly work addresses related topics, such as innovation in the arts and technology, with his next book project focused on the evolution of former RPI colleague Pauline Oliveros’s live electronic processing environment, called the ”Expanded Instrument System,” which is deployed on today’s program with special permission from the Pauline Oliveros Trust. Alongside live-coding digital artist Shawn Lawson, Century performs in the audio-visual duo Liveware, bringing live performance of sound and animation into synergy.

Before joining RPI he directed the Inter-arts and Media Arts programs at The Banff Centre (1979-93), and served as policy advisor for media arts and technology in the Canadian government (1993-2000). Century monograph on Canadian innovation in new media, Northern Sparks, was published by The MIT Press in 2022. Century studied piano with Reginald Godden in Toronto, theory/composition with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, and holds degrees in music history from the Universities of Toronto and California at Berkeley. Recent performances include the Barcelona Center for Contemporary Culture, Stanford University’s CCRMA, Harvestworks Art and Technology Center, and 2025 International Computer Music Conference.