Takehisa Kosugi

Takehisa Kosugi ( Japanese 小杉武久 Kosugi Takehisa ; born March 14, 1938 in Tokyo ; † October 12, 2018 ) was a Japanese violinist, composer, sound, multimedia and installation artist.

Kosugi studied musicology at the Tokyo University of the Arts , where he graduated in 1962. Already during his studies he performed with multi-instrumental improvisations. In 1960 he was one of the founders of the Ongaku Group in Tokyo, which was one of the first to introduce Fluxus to Japan with Dadaist performances . In 1969 he co-founded the Taj Mahal Travelers , an improvisation group that staged intermedia productions at various locations. With this he undertook a trip from 1971-72 with performances in England, other European countries, the Middle East and at the eponymous Taj Mahal in India.

In 1970 Kosugi was commissioned with the sound installations on the fairground of the Expo '70 . In the mid-1970s several music albums were created, among others in collaboration with Toshi Ichiyanagi and Michael Ranta . From 1977 he was composer and performer for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company , for which he wrote works such as SE Wave / EW Song (1976), Interspersion (1979), Cycles (1981), Spacings (1984), Assemblage (1986), Rhapsody (1987 ) and Spectra (1989) wrote; since 1995 he was musical director of the company. He worked here with John Cage , David Tudor and David Behrman and recorded several albums with them during this time, as well as with improvisation musicians Steve Lacy , Motoharu Yoshizawa and Haruna Miyaki . As a DAAD scholarship holder , he lived and worked in Berlin for a year in 1981.

As a musician, Kosugi has appeared at various festivals for new music (including Festival d'Automne in Paris, 1978/79; Festival at La Sainte-Baume , 1978/79/80; Holland Festival , 1979; Free Music Workshop in Berlin, 1984; Pro Musica Nova in Bremen, 1984; Almeida International Festival of Contemporary Music in London, 1986; Welt Musik Tage `87 in Cologne, 1987; Experimental Music in Munich, 1986/88; Inventionen in Berlin, 1986/89/92; Biennale d 'art contemporain in Lyon, 1993). His sound installations have been shown at festivals such as For Eyes and Ears in Berlin (1980), Ecouter par les yeux in Paris (1980), Soundings at Purchase in New York (1981), the New Music America Festival in Washington (1983), and Im Toten Winkel in Hamburg (1984), the sound installations in Bremen (1987), art as crossing borders: John Cage and modernism in Munich (1991), inventions in Berlin (1992) and the Donaueschinger Musiktage (1993). The Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts presented him with the 1994 John Cage Award for Music .

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personal data
SURNAME	Kosugi, Takehisa
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	小杉武久 (Japanese)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Japanese violinist, composer, sound, multimedia and installation artist
DATE OF BIRTH	March 14, 1938
PLACE OF BIRTH	Tokyo
DATE OF DEATH	October 12, 2018