Area of Research / Interest: Improvisation, Social Dynamics of Music Making

Undergraduate Education Institution: Washington University in St. Louis

Undergraduate Major: Music; Psychology

Biography: Leo Chang (he/him) is a Korean improviser, composer and performer of avant-garde music currently living in Brooklyn. Born in Seoul, Leo lived as an expat in Singapore, Taipei, and Shanghai, and then moved to the United States in 2011. Needing to assimilate to different cultures from a young age, Leo expresses rootlessness and multiplicity within identities through his music, while being skeptical of norms and definitions. Leo traces the origins of his fractured identity-formation to colonial legacies that continue to this day. His art is an act of home-making inspired by various musical and ideological movements that have sought to question power dynamics and imagine freedom within egalitarian possibilities. His primary methods are free improvisation, written text, graphical notation, and electronic processing. Email:  changh8@rpi.edu.