LAMPO Takehisa Kosugi

In this special solo performance, Takehisa Kosugi performs several compositions of multi-dimensional live electronic music including some shortened versions of longer work, most of which was originally commissioned for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Kosugi revises the material for quad sound using homemade audio generators, ready-made sound processors and light-sound interactive materials. The program includes Cycles (1981), Streams (1991), Op Music (2001), Music for Nearly 90, Part-A (2009), and Octet (2011). 

Takehisa Kosugi (b. 1938, Tokyo, Japan) is a composer for mixed-media music, and an early member of Fluxus. In 1960, he co-founded Group-Ongaku ("music group"), with Yasunao Tone, Mieko Shiomi, and others, the first collective improvisation group in Tokyo. While in New York from 1965 to 1967, Kosugi created new works in collaboration with Nam June Paik and other Fluxus members. In 1969 he co-founded the Taj Mahal Travellers, an itinerant septet for mixed-media improvisation that toured England, Europe and the Near East in 1971-72. Kosugi joined the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in 1977 as a composer and performer where he toured with John Cage and David Tudor. He was appointed music director in 1995, and worked with the company until 2011. Kosugi has received grants from The JDR 3rd Fund (1966 and 1977), a DAAD fellowship grant to reside in Berlin (1981), and the John Cage Award for Music from Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts (1994). He has performed in countless international festivals, and his installations have been presented in exhibitions throughout the world. Kosugi performed in the Lampo series in March 2000, in concert with Jim O'Rourke at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.

This performance is presented in partnership with Lampo and organized in cooperation with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Department of Sound. Founded in 1997, Lampo is a non-profit organization for experimental music, sound art, and intermedia projects. Visit www.lampo.org.