Steven Kazuo Takasugi is a composer of electro-acoustic computer-assisted, algorithmic composition with live musical performance. His work has been performed extensively both in the U.S. and internationally. He is a 2022 Creative Capital Awardee.
Takasugi collects and archives acoustic sound samples into large databases that he carefully classifies. He subjects these recordings to computer-assisted, algorithmic composition and revises and adjusts them until the resulting emergent sound phenomena, energies, and relationships “reveal hidden meanings and contexts” to the composer. Over several decades he has collected thousands of these recorded instances.
During the first iteration of Virtual MacDowell in 2020 and his follow-up residency, Steven worked on a piano concerto for the Canadian pianist Roger Admiral, the SWR (South West Germany Radio) Symphony Orchestra, and electronics for the Donaueschingen Music Festival scheduled in 2022. During his 2022 residency, Takasugi worked collaboratively with visual artist Jeff Halstead on music/sound and computer animation to be presented in the Monday Evening Concert Series in Los Angeles. He also worked on music for a new evening-long chamber piece with film by Huei Lin commissioned by the ensemble No Hay Banda of Montréal, Canada through the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation.
During his 2025 residency, Takasugi worked extensively on a new percussion trio for the Melbourne-based ensemble, Speak Percussion. The work was in collaboration with the Grainger Museum of the University of Melbourne and has or will be performed at the Donaueschingen New Music Festival in Germany as well as the Canberra International Music Festival. The project was awarded a residency at the South West Radio Experimental Studio in Freiburg, where much of the technology for the three percussionists will be developed, particularly wrist-worn microphones with volume controls so that the musicians can perform stage movements and theatrical gestures while performing on their instruments and traversing the entire stage.
Image copyright Marco Giugliarelli for Civitella Ranieri Foundation, 2017
