Nina Fukuoka is a Japanese and Polish composer and performer based in New York City. She makes instrumental and computer music and uses various media and technologies to express extramusical meaning. Her works are focused on the contemporary world through the lens of horror esthetics, video games, and feminist scholarships. She explores the possibilities of communicating through art by superimposing latent meanings with distinct images within the context of tradition and mass culture.
Nina’s works have been premiered at numerous festivals and venues in Europe, North America, and Japan; including Musica Privata festival in Lodz, Poland; Klangwerkstatt in Berlin, Germany; Musica Polonica Nova and Musica Electronica Nova festivals in Wroclaw, Poland; MINU Festival in Copenhagen, Denmark; Sonic Matter Festival in Zürich, Switzerland, Festival of Premieres in Katowice, Poland, MATA festival in New York City; and have been performed by ensembles including the Hashtag Ensemble, Ensemble Garage, Ensemble Adapter, Ekmeles Vocal Ensemble, Distractfold, International Contemporary Ensemble, Mivos Quartet, Spółdzielnia Muzyczna Contemporary Ensemble, Talea Ensemble, Orkiestra Muzyki Nowej, and TILT Brass.
In recent years, Nina has received a commission for a new piece from the Darmstädter Ferienkurse and was invited to a residency with K!ART Ensemble in Copenhagen, Denmark. She won the Hildegard Commission for music for a short film, which premiered in March 2025 at the National Sawdust in Brooklyn, New York. Her recent piece for a large ensemble and live animation, commissioned by the National Polish Radio Orchestra in Katowice, Poland, also premiered in March.
Nina graduated from the Grazyna and Kiejstut Bacewicz Academy of Music in Lodz, Poland with a Master’s degree in Theory of Music and Bachelor’s degree in Composition in the class of prof. Zygmunt Krauze. In 2012, she studied at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, Belgium as a participant of the Erasmus Exchange Program with prof. Peter Swinnen, where she continued her education in the Master’s program and graduated with distinction in 2016. In the field of electronic music she has been guided by Krzysztof Knittel, Kasia Głowicka, and Benjamin Van Esser. She defended her dissertation in April and earned the title of Doctor in Musical Arts at Columbia University in New York, where she studied with Georg Friedrich Haas, Annie Gosfield, Brad Garton, Seth Cluett, and George Lewis.
Her works inhabit a number of contemporary and experimental settings such as video scores and performance pieces with multimedia and live electronics, as well as orchestra and ensemble works. By maintaining collaborations with musicians, dancers, and film artists, Nina continues to explore new possibilities for multi-disciplinary art.
She has been a Columbia University Gagaku Ensemble member since 2019 and has performed on shō ever since.