About Troy Rogers: composer, robotic musical instrument maker
Welcome fellow human. I create music, robotic musical instruments, installations, and performances from my home base on the shores of Lake Superior in Duluth, MN. Except when I’m out doing my thing as a semi-nomadic robot herder. While you’re here, why not check out some of my projects. Or listen to music, or check out some instruments. This site is a very much a work in progress; stay tuned for updates on forthcoming performances, recordings, workshops, instruments, etc. I’ll also be adding archives of past projects as time allows. To book a performance, workshop, or lecture; or commission a composition, installation, or instrument; or to find out where to send vast quantities of cash, materials, equipment, etc., get in touch.
BioCVThey Say
Troy Rogers is a composer and instrument builder who firmly believes that if all goes extremely well, there is a nonzero chance for humanity to ultimately leave some skewed semblance of a lasting musical legacy for the robotic remnants of other failed planets. As a musical robot maker, he co-founded Expressive Machines Musical Instruments (EMMI), a group of composers dedicated to exploring and expanding the potential of robotic musical instruments. As a Fulbright scholar, he spent time at the Logos Foundation in Ghent, Belgium working with Godfried-Willem Raes and what is perhaps the world’s largest robot orchestra, where he developed a singing vocal robot, Stemmetje. Living the life of an early 21st century semi-nomadic robot herder, he resides in Duluth, MN when not touring the country in the RoboRig, a mobile platform for the development and dissemination of music for robots. He performs on streets and stages alike as Robot Rickshaw, an act that earned an Editors Choice Award at the 2015 Bay Area Maker Faire. Recognized with a Minnesota Emerging Composer Award by the American Composers Forum, he is currently at work on a new set of live music for his robot band, slated to be recorded by acclaimed Chicago producer Steve Albini later this year. Rogers is also a committed independent educator, regularly presenting lectures and offering Making Music with Robots and STEAM education workshops at universities, galleries, community art centers, makerspaces, and schools throughout the US.
Things that have been said about Troy Rogers, his music, his robotic musical instruments, etc.*
(*okay, really just a shameless, self-serving handful, with all the nastiness, obscenities, and ridicule scrubbed away.)
“For the past decade…troy has been raising an army of [musical] robots trained to destroy your sense of what it means to create.”
“the truth is he is a twisted genius.”
-Nailgun Media: A Central Virginia Music Blog, Charlottesville VA
“The first law of musical robotics: rock hard.”
“”We’ve seen plenty of robotic musical experiments, but finding a robot that can seriously shred is another matter altogether…PAM is capable of creating raucous musical performances”
-Peter Kirn, Create Digital Music
“Just as portable synthesizers changed the realm of what was possible in the 70s, these robot instruments could open up whole new fields of music in the 21st century.”
-SingularityHUB Blog
“He was a pretty good kid until he turned 3.”
-Troy’s Mom
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