Tod Machover is a researcher at MIT medialab. He has a cool project called Toy Symphony:

With Toy Symphony, Tod Machover and his team at the MIT Media Lab strive to bridge the gap between professional musicians and children, as well as between audience and performers. This three year project, combining children, virtuosic performers like violinist Joshua Bell and conductor Kent Nagano, composers and symphony orchestras around the world, is intended to radically alter how children are introduced to music, serving to redefine the relationship between professional musicians and young people.

Through the use of innovative technologies to create musical instruments and compositional tools designed for an individual of any skill level, as well as weeklong workshops culminating in an integrated performance with children and professional musicians, Toy Symphony is designed as an utterly inclusive experience, one that will infuse the orchestra with youthful and enthusiastic collaborators, and the instruments, sounds, and ideas of the 21st century.

Why do I blog this? What is interesting is all the artifacts they designed like the hand-held percussive instruments called Beatbug on the left and this impressive Music Shapers, a soft squeezable instruments (on the right, wow I am a fan of squeezable interfaces):

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