Kotoka Suzuki

Kotoka Suzuki, born in Japan, is a composer focusing on both instrumental and multimedia practices.  She has produced several large-scale multimedia works, including spatial interactive audio-visual work for both concert and installation settings, often in collaboration with artists and scholars from other disciplines. Her work reflects on life, breath and wind, and often conceives of sounds as physical form to be manipulated through the sculptural practice of composition. 

Suzuki’s work has been featured internationally by performers such as Arditti Quartet, eighth blackbird, Pacifica Quartet, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Mendelssohn Chamber Orchestra (Germany), and Continuum, at numerous venues and festivals such as Ultraschall, ISCM World Music Days, ZKM Media Museum, Inventionen, The Stone, ICMC and MATA. Among the awards she has received include DAAD Berlin Artists in Residence Program (Germany), Bourges Prize in Multimedia, First Prize in Musica Nova (Czech Republic), Global Music Awards (Gold Medal), Robert Fleming Prize from Canada Council for the Arts, and Howard Foundation Fellowship.  

She taught at the University of Chicago and Arizona State University, and currently an Associate Professor in Music & Culture at the University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC) with a graduate appointment at the Faculty of Music.