Bio
Stephen Karukas is percussionist, composer, and electronic musician based in Seattle, WA. He is a graduate of the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where he received degrees in percussion performance and music composition. He studied composition with Claude Baker, P.Q. Phan, and Don Freund. He has also been a performance fellow at nief-norf and a student in electronic music programming at IRCAM.
With work ranging in style from ambient and meditative to impressionistic to excitingly rhythmic, Karukas has composed music for ensembles such as Fifth House Ensemble and Fulcrum Point New Music. He often writes for percussion, including solo works written for Daniel Myers (Elements), Jacob Lipham (Bad Number and To Live and Die in the Wild), and Paul Millette (blue-gray).
Karukas has also collaborated with the Hutchens/Myers Duo in creating new works featuring percussion and saxophone, starting with It flows for saxophone and marimba in in 2017. Later, they commissioned Third Rail / Revelation, a gritty, energetic piece inspired by the industrial corners of Seattle, leading to two versions of the piece: one for mixed quartet and another for baritone sax, marimba, and electronics.
Recent instrumental commissions include Redshift, a solo marimba piece for a consortium led by percussionist Josh Fulford, Optimal Damage for the Concord Community High School percussion ensemble, and Brightening for trumpet and percussion quartet, commissioned by SCI and ASCAP for the Fulcrum Point New Music Project.
His music has been performed around the United States and as well as in the UK, Mexico, and the Netherlands. His sheet music is available from Tapspace and C. Alan Publications, as well as from his website, skarukas.com.
Karukas studied percussion at Indiana University with Kevin Bobo, John Tafoya, and Joseph Gramley, and drumset with Steve Houghton. He is passionate about performing contemporary chamber works, especially works for chamber percussion. While a student, he received the Mrs. Hong Pham Memorial Recognition Award for New Music Performance for premiering dozens of works by student composers. He also performed with the Indiana University Percussion Ensemble, including for the ensemble's feature concert at PASIC 2018 in which he premiered two new percussion ensemble works.
He has also been a performance fellow at nief-norf, and performed with the ensemble at the 2017 International Conference on Music and Minimalism. Professional ensembles he has performed with include the Esoterics, Terre Haute Symphony Orchestra, Columbus Indiana Philharmonic, and the Carmel Symphony Orchestra.
Karukas is an avid marimba player. In addition to his solo marimba works, he has adapted a number of piano Poèmes and Preludes by Alexander Scriabin as part of a 2018 project performing and recording the composer's works on the instrument.
He currently lives in Seattle, working as a machine learning software engineer at Google and releasing experimental electronic music as kmodp.
