Takehisa Kosugi

Japanese composer and violinist Takehisa Kosugi was born in Tokyo on 14 March 1938. He studied musicology at Tokyo University of the Arts.

He is known for creating experimental music as part of the interdisciplinary Fluxus movement, heavily influenced by John Cage, which emphasised the artistic process rather than the finished product.

In the early 1960s he created music with the Tokyo-based ensemble Group Ongaku (music group), and later worked on his own, and as part of the Taj Mahal Travellers (1969-75).

In 1994 he received a John Cage Award for Music from the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts.

From 1995 he was music director of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.

Takehisa Kosugi, who lived in Osaka, died on 12 October 2018, aged eighty.