Craig Pepples is an American composer working largely outside professional music contexts. He lived and worked in Asia for four decades, with performances of his music in Tokyo, Hong Kong, and New York.
His compositions begin with algorithmic generation, an approach developed with David Hicks, his teacher at Yale, whose software made it possible to generate and audition musical material in the absence of performers. From there, listening, selection, and placement take over; the music ranges from sparse textures to mechanistic, collage-like constructions, held together by attention and the relations between materials.
Pepples has long been part of Open Space, with its founder Benjamin Boretz and a small circle of musicians for whom listening is primary. His music has been performed by Yuji Takahashi and Ensemble Nomad in Tokyo, and recorded by Paul Zukofsky and the Mivos Quartet.
Scores available on IMSLP.