Grainger Creative Research Residency 2024 - Steven Takasugi & Speak Percussion

Steven Takasugi & Speak Percussion

Steven Takasugi is a composer of electro-acoustic computer-assisted, algorithmic composition with live musical performance. Steven collects and archives acoustic sound samples into large databases that he carefully classifies. He subjects these recordings to computer-assisted, algorithmic composition,  revising and adjusting them until the resulting emergent sound phenomena, energies, and relationships reveal hidden meanings and contexts. Over several decades he has collected thousands of these recorded instances.

As part of his March 2024 Grainger Residency, Steven will research and sample a selection of instruments from the Grainger Museum. Reflecting on the concepts of personal and public archives and the art of collecting, this project looks at both the instruments of Percy Grainger and later additions to the collection. Steven is particularly interested in capturing the sounds of innovative, and unique instruments, whose quirks reflect their history and the effects of time.

These samples will feature in Steven's new work for Speak Percussion's 25th anniversary, premiering in Melbourne in 2025. Combining a theatricalised percussion trio and electronics, this performance will feature a selection of instruments from the Grainger Museum Collection and Speak Percussion's vast instrumental archive.

Biographies
Born 1960 in Los Angeles, Steven Kazuo Takasugi studied composition with Noah Creshevsky, Bunita Marcus, Morton Feldman, Brian Ferneyhough, Joji Yuasa and Roger Reynolds, as well as computer music with Charles Dodge, F. Richard Moore, and Harold Cohen. He received his masters and doctoral degrees in composition from the University of California San Diego and has held artists and guest residencies in Japan, Germany, France, and the United States. Takasugi is currently an Associate of the Harvard University Music Department.

Speak Percussion takes percussive art to its physical and conceptual extremes. Speak questions, tests and challenges music performance practice, redefining the limits of percussion to produce world-class, risk-taking, refined and innovative music. For the past 24 years, Speak has been at the forefront of new music nationally and worldwide. From solo concerts to massed sound events, interdisciplinary projects to sound installations, participatory work to album releases, Speak’s “breathtakingly impressive” (The West Australian) work is presented locally and globally in concert halls, theatres, galleries and site-specific locations.