Kerry Hagan

Bio

Kerry L. Hagan is a composer and researcher working in both acoustic and computer media. She was born in New Jersey and is a dual citizen of the US and Ireland. She has a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering and a BFA in Music Composition with Conducting from Carnegie Mellon University. She received her MA and PhD in Music from the University of California, San Diego. She studied composition and computer music with Roger Reynolds, Chaya Czernowin, Brian Ferneyhough, Miller Puckette and F. Richard Moore. She has taught music at UCSD, UC Irvine, and the University of Limerick, Ireland.

Hagan develops real-time methods for spatialization and stochastic algorithms for musical practice. Her work endeavors to achieve aesthetic and philosophical aims while taking inspiration from mathematical and natural processes. In this way, each work combines art with science and technology from various domains. She performs regularly with Miller Puckette as the Higgs whatever, and with John Bowers in the Bowers-Hagan Duo. In 2022, the Higgs whatever and the Bowers-Hagan Duo joined forces as the HPB Trio at Piksel Festival in Bergen Norway. She has created works for the La Jolla Symphony with a Thomas Nee Commission, RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra (Ireland) as part of the CMC Composer Lab, and the Irish Chamber Choir as part of the CMC Choral Sketches.

As a researcher, Hagan’s interests include real-time algorithmic methods for music composition and sound synthesis, spatialization techniques for 3D sounds and electronic/electroacoustic musicology. Her music and research has been presented at SEAMUS, ICMC, SMC, EMS, and other conferences and festivals for electronic and computer music. She co-edited Between the Tracks: Musicians on Selected Electronic Music with Miller Puckette, published by MIT Press.

In 2010, Hagan led a group of practitioners to form the Irish Sound, Science and Technology Association, where she served as President until 2015. Currently, she is President of the International Computer Music Association.