GREGORY KOZAK: Composer | Instrument Inventor | Artistic Director | Performer
Gregory Kozak + 'Junk-on-a-Stick' (Photo Credit: Alex Gower)
Gregory Kozak is a Canadian composer, instrument inventor, choreographer and performer whose work defies conventional musical categories. As co-founder and Co-Artistic Director of Scrap Arts Music, established with Justine Murdy in 1998, he has spent nearly three decades creating an entirely original musical world built around instruments of his own invention.
His five-member touring ensemble performs exclusively on his extraordinary collection of more than 145 handcrafted instruments, presenting original compositions that combine intricate rhythms, athletic movement, theatrical invention and unexpected sound. Scrap Arts Music has performed internationally since 2001, bringing Kozak's work to audiences across North America, Europe, Asia and Australia.
An Orchestra of His Own Invention
Trained in jazz and world music and influenced by the experimental composers of the twentieth century, Kozak developed a distinctive musical language that demanded instruments beyond those available in conventional orchestras. He taught himself metal fabrication to give physical form to the sounds he imagined.
His instruments transform industrial scrap, salvaged materials and discarded objects into sophisticated musical creations. They are simultaneously sculptures, sound generators and extensions of the performer's body. His longstanding concern about society's culture of disposability has made material reuse central to his artistic practice.
“Kozak’s instruments tend to be, in the spirit of American composer Harry Partch, mutated versions of the familiar...”
— David Patrick Stearns, PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
The instruments are remarkable not simply for their unusual construction but for the musical possibilities they create. Together, they form a distinctive orchestral vocabulary that is inseparable from Kozak's compositions.
Composition and Collaboration
Although widely recognized for his instrument inventions, Kozak is first and foremost a composer. His work encompasses ensemble performance, solo concert works, symphonic commissions and collaborations with orchestras, dancers and circus artists.
In 2004, the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia premiered his Composition for Sighchordions and Strings at Philadelphia's Kimmel Center. The work explored the expressive relationship between his invented wind instruments and a traditional string ensemble.
“Kozak's sense of unfolding form is flawless… and his ear for the imaginative layering of propulsive rhythms is impeccable. ”
— Michael Caruso, Chestnut Hill Review
In 2009, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation commissioned Kozak to compose a work for the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra's New Music Festival. His 13-minute Concerto for Chariot of Choir and Strings featured Kozak as soloist on the Chariot of Choir, a monumental 32-foot-long, 22-stringed instrument constructed from salvaged industrial and theatrical materials, including sawmill components, submarine ballast and a science-fiction film prop.
The premiere received considerable critical attention.
“Gregory Kozak’s 'Concerto for Chariot of Choir and Strings' provided the magic for the night.”
— Holly Harris, WINNIPEG FREEPRESS
His earlier collaborations included a symphonic work for 65 young classical musicians and invented instruments, presented during the Vancouver International Children's Festival's twentieth anniversary celebrations in 1997.
From Experimental Music to International Stages
Kozak's original compositions first reached Broadway in February 1998 through an earlier touring production, shortly before he and Murdy established Scrap Arts Music.
His debut recording, Fabrication Laboratory, was released in 1998, followed by Phon in 2001, featuring the newly formed Scrap Arts Music quintet and an expanding orchestra of invented instruments.
Since then, Scrap Arts Music has toured internationally, appearing at major performing arts festivals and theatres and introducing audiences to an approach to music-making that crosses cultural and linguistic boundaries.
Throughout this career, Kozak has continued to develop new compositions, instruments and performance formats rather than relying on a fixed repertoire.
Children of Metropolis: A New Artistic Frontier
Kozak's recent work, Children of Metropolis, represents a major evolution in his artistic practice.
Inspired by the imaginative world of Fritz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis, his entirely original black-and-white silent feature combines cinema, live instrumental performance, choreography and visual storytelling.
The 72-minute film is accompanied by five musicians performing Kozak's original score on 88 invented instruments. Its fantastical story follows a musician navigating a city threatened by the consequences of scientific ambition, ultimately exploring the transformative possibilities of music, imagination and human ingenuity, with humour and a nod to the greats of filmmaking of the past.
The completed production premiered in Silver City, New Mexico, in April 2024 and has since been presented in the United States. A major New York City engagement is scheduled for April 16, 2027, at the historic United Palace, coinciding with the centenary year of Lang's film.
Children of Metropolis extends Kozak's decades-long exploration of the relationship between sound, movement, materials and theatrical imagination into the realm of original filmmaking.
Artistic Philosophy and Training
Kozak studied jazz at Karl Berger's Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, New York, and at the New School for Social Research in New York City. His musical education also includes private study with Pandit Pran Nath in North Indian vocal traditions, Abraham Adzenyah in West African drumming and dance, Elaine Agnew in composition, and Steve Berrios in Afro-Cuban percussion.
These diverse influences inform a musical practice that resists stylistic boundaries while remaining grounded in rhythm, physical expression and experimentation.
Across his career, Kozak has demonstrated an enduring commitment to independent artistic creation: inventing not only new instruments and compositions but the means through which they can be performed, shared and sustained.
His work continues to challenge assumptions about what constitutes a musical instrument, what materials deserve a second life, and what live performance can become.
Read more critical reviews of Gregory Kozak.