 The symphony is one of the most majestic and significant forms of classical music. It's also one of the most hierarchical. Imagine Beethoven composing his ninth symphony when he was deaf, so he heard all that music inside his head, wrote it down, in bad handwriting on manuscript paper, delivered it to a conductor who learned it, taught it to an orchestra who then delivered it to people around the world. So it was from Beethoven's mind to millions and millions of people over the centuries. We're trying to imagine the symphony as a completely opposite process, as one of the most bottom-up processes that you can imagine. At the Media Lab over these last six years, we've invented a form called city symphonies. The idea is to create a portrait of a city, to do that with music, but also by listening to the city and understanding what it is about the actual sounds in that city that tell its story. And then we invite everybody in the city to collaborate with myself and my team at the MIT Media Lab to create this piece. Since everybody in the city has different views of what that city feels like, where it's been, where it's going, it's a fantastic method for connecting people with a common theme and common purpose through sound to make something together. I'd like to share with you now one glimpse of these city symphonies. This is from Symphony in D, which we created for the city of Detroit. You'll first see a bit of a trailer, which shows something about the making of this piece, and then you'll hear a little bit from the world premiere performance. In full disclosure, there is an orchestra on stage. It's the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. But in a rather different form, the orchestra is combined with all these sounds of the city and with many people from Detroit who I met during the project. So you'll see middle schoolers playing with electronic instruments, techno artists, chorus from a nearby church, African drummers, electric bass players, all kinds of different people who normally wouldn't be on stage with an orchestra. So maybe a new kind of music, a totally new kind of process, a symphony made by a city for all of you to hear. I hope you enjoy it. Not done yet. If you don't recognize the genius in refusing to be generic, if you still can't tell the difference between the boom and the bass, you've never been to Detroit. But don't worry, we'll still be here when you decide to learn.