Author: BlogMeister

Board member Sep Kamvar is a computer scientist, artist, and entrepreneur.  He has been a professor at MIT and Stanford, and a co-founder of Wildflower Schools (a network of Montessori microschools), Mosaic Building Group (an AI-based residential construction company), and Celo (a mobile-based global payments platform for cryptocurrencies).  Sep’s main contributions to computer science have been at the intersection of computer science and mathematics, particularly in the fields of numerical linear algebra, peer-to-peer networks, and information retrieval. 

Sep is the author of three books and over 40 technical publications and patents, and his artwork has been exhibited at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Victoria and Albert Musem in London, and the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens among others. Sep received his PhD in scientific computing and computational mathematics from Stanford University and an AB in chemistry from Princeton University. 

Cecilia taught General and Adaptive Music K-12 in the Iowa City Community School District for 32 years. She has a master’s degree in music education specializing in music therapy and behavior disorders from the University of Iowa. She was honored by the ICCSD District Parent’s Organization in 2012, received the Achievement in Education Award for Outstanding Contributions to Education in 2014 and was the Iowa City Education Association’s Teacher of the Year in 2017. Cecilia piloted Hyperscore in 2003 and passionately taught the program until 2020.

When the nation went into lockdown in March of 2020, Cecilia reached out to New Harmony Line in desperation. Her music students could no longer share computers in their lab and she wanted to know if Hyperscore was available on the Web. The new version of Hyperscore wasn’t ready at the time, but she began to talk regularly with June and Peter. When Cecilia retired from teaching in the spring of 2021, she took on a new role, as Director of Education for New Harmony Line. She connected with educators to beta-test Hyperscore for the Web and is collecting feedback, evaluating students’ reactions, and using their input to add new features to the software and develop teaching materials. With her long experience teaching with Hyperscore in public schools, she is a great guide and collaborator for educators who wish to introduce Hyperscore to their classrooms.

June is an experienced entrepreneur and executive with a track record of creating and transforming game-changing organizations. Her extensive non-profit leadership experience includes serving since 2012 at the FSHD Society, a rare disease advocacy and funding organization. Previously, she co-founded the Alzheimer Research Forum and N-of-One, a pioneering precision medicine company.

“Having seen Hyperscore in action, I am driven to see this amazing technology realize its potential to transform how children experience music,” she says. “My passion is to make the world a better place by building sustainable models to promote health, wellness and culture.”

June is a graduate of Harvard College, where she concentrated in physics, and has been a writer and editor for Scientific American, Science, The New York Times Magazine, and many other national publications.

Two years ago, Tod Machover and June Kinoshita founded New Harmony Line to resurrect Hyperscore, the software which hundreds of school children have used to compose original music that has been woven into Tod’s Toy Symphony and City Symphony pieces and performed around the world. Hyperscore enables anyone to express themselves through original compositions without demanding years of musical training. It’s super fun to use, and more importantly, it helps young people “find their voice” and deepen their appreciation of musical culture—a lifelong gift.

We’re incredibly lucky to have Peter Torpey, Tod’s former PhD student at the Media Lab, join as CTO of New Harmony Line. Peter has redeveloped Hyperscore as a web application. This was a tour de force, and we now have a beta version that is being tested this fall in 24 classrooms across the U.S. and Europe. Our next step is to develop the back-end software so that we can release Hyperscore in the spring of 2022 to the educational market.

To help us fund this critical step, we have launched a Kickstarter campaign. We would love it so much if you would consider supporting it. Your financial backing would be amazing, but just as important is your help in sharing the campaign with your network. Our success depends critically on word of mouth, especially at the start of the campaign. We’d deeply appreciate your help in letting your friends and connections know about it. Encourage them to view the page and share it in turn to anyone they think might be excited by Hyperscore.