Steven Kemper
is a composer, music technologist, and instrument designer. As a composer, Steven creates music for acoustic instruments, instruments and computers, musical robots, dance and video. His compositions have been performed by the American Modern Ensemble, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, NOW ensemble, and the Grupo Sax-Ensemble. The have also been presented at numerous festivals worldwide, including ICMC, NIME, SEAMUS, SIGCHI, SMC, 12 Nights, Florida Electroacoustic Music Festival, Third Practice Festival, Pixilerations, American Composers Alliance Festival of American Music, and the Seoul International Computer Music Festival. Steven has received awards for his music from the Ammerman Center for Arts and Technology, Meet the Composer, the Danish Arts Council, and the International Computer Music Association. His first solo album of electroacoustic music, Mythical Spaces, was released by Ravello Records in 2018.

Steven’s interest in music technology centers on the development of technologies that enhance the connectivity between electronic music and the physical world. Research areas include musical robotics, instrument design, human-computer interaction, gesture and music, and networked music. Steven is a co-founder of Expressive Machines Musical Instruments, a collective dedicated to creating and composing music for robotic instruments. He also co-developed the RAKS (Remote electroAcoustic Kinesthetic Sensing) System, a wireless sensor interface designed specifically for belly dancers with composer and dancer Aurie Hsu, and Movable Party, a bicycle-powered interactive DJing system. Additionally, Steven is a co-founder of LA Listens, an organization that takes an analytic-praxis approach to listen to the interrelationships between the sensory, social, and ecological aspects of streets in Los Angeles. Steven’s research has been presented at NIME, ICMC, and MOCO, and published in Leonardo, Organised Sound, Emille: The Journal of the Korean Electro-Acoustic Music Society, and Noise & Silence.

Steven received a Ph.D. in Composition and Computer Technologies from the University of Virginia (UVA), where he studied with Judith Shatin, Matthew Burtner, and Ted Coffey. He holds a M.M. in Composition from Bowling Green State University and a B.A. in Music from Bowdoin College.