Hideki Kozakura

Hideki Kozakura is a Japanese composer, sound artist, pianist and music educator whose work spans contemporary composition, electroacoustic music and computer music. Born in Nagoya in 1970, he began piano studies at the age of five and violin at seven, laying the foundations for a musical career that has taken him across Japan, Europe and the Americas.He holds two Master of Arts degrees in composition: the first from the Tokyo University of the Arts (1999), where he studied under Akira Miyoshi and Teruyuki Noda, and the second from the Royal College of Music in Stockholm (2004), where his teachers included Bent Sørensen, Pär Lindgren and Örjan Sandred. He has also studied spectral composition with Tristan Murail, and continues to work with Daniel Figols Cuevas in electroacoustic music and spatial sound design.
Kozakura first gained international recognition in 1997 when he was awarded Second Prize at the Tōru Takemitsu International Composition Competition. Subsequent honours include the Agency for Cultural Affairs Performing Arts Prize (Japan), the Nomura Cultural Foundation Scholarship, and the Berlin Composition Stipend for New Music. His works have since been performed by leading musicians and ensembles throughout Japan, Europe and the Americas. His compositional voice draws on a remarkably wide range of influences: the formal rigour of the German Classical tradition, the theatrical aesthetics of Japanese performing arts such as Kabuki and Kyōgen, and the sonic worlds of German electro-pop and acid techno. This breadth of reference is reflected in a catalogue that moves fluidly between chamber music, orchestral writing, electroacoustic works and sound installation.
Recordings of his music appear on the BIS, Media Artes, Japan Acoustic Records, Artistic Records and Logic (London) labels.
As a cultural entrepreneur, Kozakura co-founded Company Bene in 2009 together with Tokyo-based composer Haruyuki Suzuki, with the aim of organising international events and championing the work of emerging musicians worldwide. He also serves as Artistic Director of Ensemble Musica Qulacoza and as a member of the Executive Committee of the MID JAPAN Sound Complex Art Festival.
His academic career has been centred primarily at Nagoya College of Music, where he served as Professor and Head of the Composition Department from 2011 to 2024, and where he currently holds a Visiting Professorship in Sound–Media–Design. He has been invited as a guest professor or lecturer at institutions including McGill University (Montréal), the Universität Leipzig, the Conservatori Superior de Música del Liceu (Barcelona), Bilkent University (Ankara) and Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts (Istanbul), among others. In 2027 he will take up a composition residency at the SWR Experimentalstudio in Freiburg im Breisgau.
He is a member of the Society of Swedish Composers (FST), STIM, the Elektronmusikstudion (EMS) in Stockholm and the Japan Society for Sound Art (JSSA).