About

photo ©Yiannis Katsaris

steve (gruzas) (pfleegor) potter is an American composer, musician, performer, researcher & teacher based in London since 2006. His artistic work integrates satirical reflections on racial segregation and class ideology, with noise, speech, and movement, into mind-altering performances. He is a performing member, writer, accompanist & conductor with Musarc, teaches composition at Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and teaches piano privately. In 2015-16 he was a Fellow at the Society for the Humanities at Cornell University and taught at Auburn Correctional Facility through the Cornell Prison Education Program. His research focuses on how political metaphors and techniques of power play out in musical practices, particularly those practices interested in distancing themselves from traditional hierarchies. His article, ‘Cage and Foucault: Musical Timekeeping and the Security State’ recently came out in Foucault’s Theatres (2020, Manchester University Press).

Collaboration through friendship is central to Steve’s practice, and his collaborators have included filmmakers, post-dramatic actors, anthropology and literature scholars, instrumental improvisers, animators, vocalists and dancers. His performing life encompasses keyboards, voice, accordion, amplified objects, samplers, drawing, improvisation with film, and conducting. Steve has performed with Musarc, the London Improvisers Orchestra, Neil Luck, Southbank Gamelan Ensemble, Cara Curran, Justin Christensen, Ollie Evans, Federico Reuben, Adam de la Cour, Phil Venables, and Katherine Christie Evans.

His recent work includes text and performance for Neil Luck’s 3 votive mysteries (2022, Musarc: The End of the World Service, presented by Post Disaster Rooftops, Taranto, Italy); composition and performance for COUNCIL SYSTEM (2019, Musarc folk meet on a midsummer day until dusk III, Whitechapel Bell Foundry), HAMHANDED (2019), Well I want it in writing, the smallest event and the secretest agency (2016, Cornell University); Music for the Sleepy (2015, Infancy, History and the Avant-Garde festival, London); Krono-Metre: Catalogue Out of Time (2010, with Kélina Gotman, Making Sense Colloquium, IRI-Centre Pompidou/Institut Télécom/NYU in Paris); Old People in the Wrong House Dancing With Robots (2011, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Domaine Forget festival, Quebec); and The Officers (2008, New York City Opera VOX showcase).

Steve was influenced by studies with Janet Gyatso (Buddhist philosophy) at Amherst College; David Osmond-Smith (critical theory) & Martin Butler (composition) at Sussex University; and Gilius van Bergeijk, Clarence Barlow & Louis Andriessen (composition) at Koninklijk Conservatorium Den Haag. He grew up in Chico, California.

Teaching
Research Seminar: Musical Timekeeping and the Security State