Michael Lassoff

At EMS 2025–2026

Michael Lassoff is a composer and psychotherapist. His music draws inspiration from his therapeutic work, rooted in relational and somatic practices, which shape how he listens, observes, and responds to sound. The studio functions for him much like the analytic space: a place to track shifts in attention, resistance, and physical presence, and to follow what emerges from moment to moment.

Using Buchla and Serge modular synthesizers, his music investigates how automated, process-based systems can generate unexpected sonic outcomes. Rather than aiming for emotional expression, he examines the boundary between raw, sometimes inelegant noise and more stable, coherent sonic forms. His compositions arise from alternating phases of tight control and open improvisation, showing how small changes in a system can accumulate and turn into something new.

Michael has played in numerous venues in and around Santa Fe, where he first developed his performance practice. At EMS, he continues to refine a practice in which playing and listening operate together as a focused, deliberate activity. His work brings together the exactness of modular synthesis with the immediacy of real-time decision-making, creating situations where sound is examined rather than illustrated.