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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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