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Born in 1979, Steve Potter grew up in Chico, California, learning piano through the Suzuki method. He studied music and critical theory at Amherst College, the University of Sussex and the Koninklijk Conservatorium Den Haag. Since 2006 he has been a PhD candidate in composition at King’s College London. In addition to composing, he teaches music theory and performs and promotes the work of his peers. His composition teachers have included George Benjamin, Clarence Barlow, Gilius van Bergeijk, Louis Andriessen and Lewis Spratlan. His music has been performed by ASKO Ensemble, Philharmonia Orchestra and New York City Opera, and he has received a CAP grant from the American Music Center to support the performance of his work. In June 2010 Steve is in Switzerland working with Arditti String Quartet on a new piece.

Steve composes with a view of music as an ethically charged practice ripe for allegorical interpretation, rather than as a purely decorative art. His main interests include experimental vocal music; music as a form of fiction; music as a theater of contradictory personalities; and palinode. In order to create lucid polyphonies of distinct characters, he models rhythmic and melodic shapes on musical examples from diverse cultures and eras. Everyday speech, Korean classical music, Mozart arias, grunge rock and West African popular music, are among the influences of the contours in his scores. He combines this polyphonic musical discourse with anti-musical noises and staged events, and experiments with the pacing of their juxtapositions and superimpositions.

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