Severin Behnen takes an eclectic approach to music making - from composing and performing for theatrical productions to working with jazz, folk, and bluegrass groups, classical and new music ensembles. Between 1990 and 2000 he acted as composer, musical director, and performer in numerous theatrical productions at In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre in Minneapolis. Between 2000 and 2003 he traveled with the company on three separate occasions to South Korea. On their last visit he collaborated with both Korean and Iraqi performers as part of the Guacheon Theater Festival. In 2003 his compositions Make the Center Glow for chamber orchestra and Brilliant Leaves, which employed a computer animated score, were selected for the opening of the RedCat Theater in Disney Hall in Los Angeles. In 2004 he composed and performed in Bari Gongju, a Korean mask and puppet play premiered at the Korean Cultural Center in Los Angeles. He served as composer and performer with Automota Theater in a 2005 screening of Magical Projections: A Screening of Early Trick Films and in the 2006 toy theater production of Frankenstein, Mortal Toys. In late 2007 Frankenstein was remounted in Los Angeles and then taken to New York for a two week run at the HERE Arts Center. He recently completed a run of Ironman at Manual Archives in Los Angeles with One Grain of Sand Theater. In June 2008 he will again serve as composer and performer in One Grain of Sand Theater in their production of On the Pulse of Morning at Disney Hall’s Toy Theater Festival in Los Angeles. He regularly performs with and composes for Tango Nuevo, a quartet that he co-founded in 2003, as well as organizing various other performances of his music. He is currently the recipient of a Dissertation Year Fellowship from UCLA focusing on the development and testing of various types of musical notation in an interactive motion graphics environment.