Short Bio:

Steven Kemper composes music for acoustic instruments, instruments and computers, musical robots, dance, video, and networked systems. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Virginia in Composition and Computer Technologies. Steven received a M.M. from Bowling Green State University in composition and a B.A. from Bowdoin College.

Steven’s works have been performed by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, NOW ensemble, and the Grupo Sax-Ensemble and presented at ICMC, SEAMUS, SIGCHI, FEMF, Pixilerations, American Composers Alliance Festival of American Music, and the Seoul International Computer Music Festival. In 2010, Steven won the International Computer Music Association 2010 Student Award for Best Submission for Shadows no. 5, part of a collaborative series of pieces with composer and dancer Aurie Hsu, for tribal fusion belly dance, electroacoustic music and RAKS (Remote electroAcoustic Kinesthetic Sensing) System, a wireless sensor interface designed specifically for tribal fusion belly dancer.

Steven is a co-founder of Expressive Machines Musical Instruments, a collective dedicated to creating and composing music for robotic instruments. He is also a member of UVA’s Interactive Media Research Group (IMRG) where he is a Java developer for NOMADS (Network-Operational Mobile Applied Digital System), a web based tool for artistic creation and teaching in large-scale classroom and performance contexts.