Stephen Andrew Taylor (born 1965) composes music that explores boundaries between art and science. His first orchestra commission, Unapproachable Light , inspired by images from the Hubble Space Telescope and the New Testament, was premiered by the American Composers Orchestra in 1996 in Carnegie Hall. Paradises Lost, an opera based on the science-fiction novella by Ursula K. Le Guin, received its Canadian premiere in 2013, conducted by the composer. In 2015 the New York Times called his piano work Variations Ascending, premiered by Ian Hobson, “persuasive and powerful.” Other works include the 2001 quartet Quark Shadows, commissioned by the Chicago Symphony; Seven Memorials, a 30-minute cycle for piano inspired by the work of Maya Lin and featured at Tanglewood in 2006; and Chaconne/Labyrinth, premiered by the Jupiter Quartet at the Bowdoin Festival in 2021.
Taylor also works with live electronics and improvisation, most recently in incidental music for the performance piece Quantum Voyages, premiered at the 2025 American Physical Society in Anaheim, California. He co-directs the Illinois Modern Ensemble, and has also appeared as conductor with Camerata Novi Sad, Sinfonia da Camera, the Nouveau Classical Project, and the Arizona Chamber Music Festival. As a theorist, he has written and lectured on data sonification, György Ligeti, African rhythm, Björk and Radiohead. In popular music he has collaborated on concerts and albums with Pink Martini, rock singer Storm Large, cabaret/performance artist Meow Meow, and pianist Lang Lang. His arrangements have been performed by orchestras worldwide, including the Oregon Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the BBC Concert Orchestra, and the Chicago Symphony. He was a 2014 Fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation.
He grew up in Illinois and studied at Northwestern and Cornell Universities, and the California Institute of the Arts. His music has won awards from the Guggenheim and Howard Foundations, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Illinois Arts Council, the Conservatoire Américain de Fontainebleau, Composers, Inc., the Debussy Trio, the College Band Directors National Association, the New York State Federation of Music Clubs, the American Music Center, and ASCAP. Among his commissions are works for the Grossman Ensemble, Camerata Novi Sad, Syracuse Society for New Music, the Jupiter Quartet, Spoleto Festival, Pink Martini and the Oregon Symphony, the Chicago Symphony, Quad City Symphony, Quincy Symphony, Quartet New Generation, Piano Spheres, and the American Composers Orchestra. Taylor is Professor of Music at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where he lives with his spouse, artist Hua Nian.