Brandon Tai is an SF-based musician and computational artist who blends live instrumentation with algorithmic processes, using each to push the other somewhere new. His work is grounded in mathematics and engineering research at Stanford and UCLA, with a focus on accessibility and real-world impact.
Rooted in 14 years of classical guitar performance, he organizes music collectives, performs live algorithmic music, and hosts creative technology workshops and lectures. He is a resident in the Gray Area Cultural Incubator 2026 cohort, developing generative interfaces for musical performance.
His current project, Parallel Play, is a generative system that improvises alongside a live performer, responding in real time to what they play. It was presented at the 2026 Gray Area Cultural Incubator Showcase, and he performs with it as custom software, merging acoustic and algorithmic sound on stage. The project is built around an idea of agency density: that a creative tool's value comes from how many meaningful human decisions it preserves, not from how much it can produce on its own.
