On Saturday, October 3, 2026, Jordan Rudess brings a project that MIDI.org readers have been following for two years to its biggest stage yet.
At MIT’s Thomas Tull Concert Hall, Rudess will improvise live with jam_bot — an AI model trained on his own playing — alongside the MIT Chamber Chorus and guest student performers, in the world premiere of Jordan Rudess + jam_bot: A Human-AI Musical Dialogue.
Event details
- Date: Saturday, October 3, 2026
- Times: 5:00 PM and 8:00 PM (two performances)
- Venue: Thomas Tull Concert Hall, MIT, Cambridge, MA
- Tickets: $5 MIT community / $10 general admission, 300 seats per performance
- Presented with: MIT Media Lab Responsive Environments, the Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) at MIT, MIT Music & Theater Arts, and MIT Future Fest
The concerts are the inaugural performance of MIT Future Fest, and a portion of the 5:00 PM house is reserved for Future Fest pass holders. A free interactive jam_bot installation runs in the MIT Museum lobby from October 1 through 4.
What makes this premiere different
jam_bot is the result of a three-year collaboration between Rudess and the MIT Media Lab’s Responsive Environments group — researchers Lancelot Blanchard and Perry Naseck, working with Professor Joseph A. Paradiso. It is not a general-purpose music generator trained to imitate many artists. It was built with one musician, on that musician’s own playing, to extend what he can create and perform live.
What premieres on October 3 is the next step: jam_bot listening and responding to Rudess in real time while also generating musical material for human singers — the MIT Chamber Chorus — to perform on the spot. The program moves across territory as far apart as Baroque counterpoint and progressive rock.
“I’ve spent my entire life studying, exploring, and creating music. What excites me about jam_bot isn’t the technology by itself — it’s where it can take me musically.”Jordan Rudess
How we got here: jam_bot on MIDI.org
The MIDI Association has covered this collaboration since its first public outing:
- Jordan Rudess and MIT’s jam_bot: A New Era of Human-AI Musical Collaboration — the September 2024 work-in-progress performance at the MIT Media Lab with violinist Camilla Bäckman, where a 16-foot kinetic sculpture moved in response to what jam_bot played.
- The JamBot at ISMIR 2025 — jam_bot, a 2025 MIDI Innovation Award finalist in the installation category, performing at the International Society for Music Information Retrieval conference in Daejeon, Korea.
- Jordan Rudess Brings MIT’s JAM_BOT to Life at the Berklee AI Music Summit — the 2026 summit performance that showed a room of artists, educators and technologists what a real-time AI improvisation partner actually sounds like.
- Berklee’s AI Music Summit Brings Artists, Educators and Technologists Together to Shape the Future of Music — the wider context for that June 2026 concert.
A long association with The MIDI Association
Jordan Rudess has been part of MIDI Association events and MIDI.org coverage for more than a decade, and he has performed and spoken on our behalf again and again:
- MMA @ The 2013 NAMM Show — Rudess on the MIDI Creators and Innovators panel with Dave Smith, George Duke, Tom Oberheim, Alan Parsons and Craig Anderton, marking 30 years of MIDI.
- The MIDI Association at Winter NAMM 2016 — the Executive Roundtable on keyboards and virtual instruments, with Rudess alongside Craig Anderton, Roger Linn, Mike Martin and others.
- MIDI Artist Interview with Jordan Rudess — our 2016 exclusive interview, going back to his earliest encounters with MIDI.
- GeoShred 2 with MIDI and MPE Released! — the Whizdom Music / moForte instrument that made Rudess one of the most visible champions of MPE.
- Jordan Rudess’s KeyFest 2019 — his keyboard festival at Sweetwater.
- moForte Announces GeoSWAM II and Naada Collection I for GeoShred — expressive physical-modeling instruments, the latter created with Indian artists Mahesh Raghvan and Madan Pisharody.
- MIDI Association Offers a Full Schedule Leading up to NAMM 2022 and MIDI Association Hosts Multiple Events at June NAMM 2022 — Rudess opened our A3E / NAMM / MIDI Association reception, the same evening as the MIDI Innovation Awards ceremony.
- MIDI@40 and Hip-Hop@50 Anniversary Celebrations Await at The 2023 NAMM — Rudess performing with musicians from India for MIDI’s 40th anniversary.
- Jordan Rudess on GeoShred, Expressive MIDI, and the Future of Music Tech — our 2025 conversation about where expressive control is heading.
That thread — MIDI, then MPE, then machine learning — runs straight into what happens at MIT on October 3. The through-line has never been the technology for its own sake. It has been finding the next thing that responds to a player’s hands.
More about the project at the MIT Media Lab.