Kevin Terrell Madison’s layered, eclectic and freewheeling musical career cannot be easily steered into one lane. As a lover of all Musics, Kevin has found himself equally comfortable lecturing on queer theory and dance music history in the most prestigious musical institutions of the globe as he is in the warehouse parties of downtown LA and NYC, DJing and dancing to the writhing beat of the latest, most innovative electronic music being produced. His career as a composer runs the gamut of commissions for the Next Festival in NYC, the Percussive Arts Society, premieres at Carnegie Hall, features on WQXR, international commissions as a sound artist for gallery installs in Hamburg for re:publica festival and in Iceland for the Lunga festival, as well as electronic scores for Los Angeles fashion runways.

Kevin is no stranger to crossing genres, disciplines, and the supposed boundaries between high-brow and low-brow art. His foundational training as a classical pianist with luminaries such as Jerome Lowenthal of the Juilliard School and Stephen Drury of Boston new-music fame informs the approach he takes to all music - one of rigor, focused intention, and deep respect for the craft. Kevin borrows from the discipline of classical music and applies it to a practice based primarily in care and community building, viewing authentic relationships as the foundation to any sustainable, fulfilling career in the arts. 

As a pianist, Kevin has had the honor of performing Beethoven’s 3rd Piano Concerto with the Brevard Symphony Orchestra, touring nationally with Evan Zipoyrn’s Blackstar orchestra as a soloist in collaboration with cellist Maya Beiser, receiving the Alfred G. Humphrey Prize for Excellence in Keyboard Studies during his undergraduate education, and winning several regional competitions in piano along the way. Kevin has also been in residence at the Bang on a Can Summer Festival, been featured for Minaret Records with his band noworriesLMK, and brought several lesser-known works by Nigerian composer Joshua Uzoigwe to the attention of pianists worldwide through his recordings with Berklee for their official social media. Beyond that, Kevin continually premieres his own works for piano and continues to hone his improvisational ear, spanning genres such as post-minimalism, R&B, jazz, free jazz and contemporary classical. 

Kevin’s career as a DJ is one based in a historical understanding of dance culture as a primary site of coalition-building between disparate marginalized communities in the US, as well as the font from which much of our cultural milieu emerges, including musical innovation, fashion trends, queer theories of identity, resistance movements and space creation for those on the margins of society. In his own work as a DJ, Kevin has been featured on KCHUNG radio, in Portland for Club Liminal, in NYC for the underground and in Los Angeles for raves in the Mojave and Joshua tree deserts. In LA, where he is based, Kevin also uses DJing to cultivate musical space for his communities with intention, organizing free-to-participate parties where queer people can unwind and connect with each other over the many political obstacles that they face in contemporary society. 

As a researcher, Kevin has presented his care-based approach to identity and music through lecture and performance at conferences such as the Northeast Queer and Trans People of Color Conference and the New Music Gathering, and in the classroom at his alma mater CalArts, designing and teaching curriculum for courses Queering Musical Symbology and Emancipatory Dancefloors. Kevin’s thesis work at Calarts focused on connecting the disparate musical histories he has been influenced by, demonstrating their relationalities in an attempt to destabilize hierarchical superstructures that limit our movement as curious artists.