Seiji Nagai

Born in Tokyo in 1948, he opened his ears to free jazz and improvisation in the late 1960s, co-founding an improvisation series with Tokio Hasegawa in 1967 before joining Takehisa Kosugi's Taj Mahal Travellers in 1969, one of Asia's most uncompromising avant-garde ensembles of the era. He subsequently studied sitar in India, returning to Japan to perform extensively, and shifted toward computer composition around 1979, exploring environmental sound as material. His long trajectory across trumpet, harmonica, percussion, sitar, and synthesizer reflects a restless engagement with global improvisation and early electronic music.