Born 1960 in Los Angeles, studied composition with Noah Creshevsky, Bunita Marcus, Morton Feldman, Brian Ferneyhough, Joji Yuasa and Roger Reynolds (PhD chair), as well as computer music with Charles Dodge, F. Richard Moore, and Harold Cohen. His undergraduate work was begun at the University of California, Los Angeles and completed at the Brooklyn College Conservatory of Music, City University of New York. He received his masters and doctoral degrees in composition from the University of California, San Diego and has held artists and guest residencies in Japan, Germany, France, Israel, and the United States. His work has been presented worldwide including Acousmain, Frankfurt, E-werk, Freiburg, Transit Festival, Leuven, Belgium, Ultraschall and MaerzMusik, Berlin, HaTeiva, Jaffa, Israel, Symphony Space, New York, Stockholm New Music, State Theater, Freiburg, Bludenz Festival for Contemporary Music, Austria, ISCM Geneva, ICMC Thessaloniki, Greece, IRCAM, Paris, Asia Music Week 2000, Yokohama, Tempus Novum, Tokyo, The Central Conservatory of Music, Beijing, the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music, Germany. He’s the recipient of numerous awards including a 2010 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, a Japan Foundation Artist Fellowship and Residency, a DAAD HSK Award, a Heinrich-Strobel Foundation Experimentalstudio grant, ASCAP, UC Regents Fellowship, the Muriel Gluck Award, a UCLA Pierre Boulez Residency, and a special scholarship from the Mayor of Darmstadt. He has lectured extensively and is author of many articles on New Music and aesthetics.

Takasugi teaches composition as an Associate in the Music Department in Harvard University’s doctoral student composition program and is Managing Director of the Harvard Summer Master Courses in New Music Composition. He has taught at the University of California, San Diego, the California Institute of the Arts, the Kunitachi College of Music, Tokyo, and HaTeiva in Jaffa, Israel. He is permanent faculty at the International Summer Academy for Composition, Academy Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, the Tzlil Meudcan Summer Course for Contemporary Performance and Composition in Israel, and is one of the founding editors of Search Journal for New Music and Culture, a peer reviewed journal with an emphasis on New Music composition.