Photo Credit: Jess Baumung

Billed as “one of Canada’s most audacious new composers” (The Western Front), Michael has collaborated in a number of contexts spanning from concert music (New Forms Festival, Sonic Boom, Toronto New Music Festival, CanAsian Dance Festival, InFringing Dance Festival, National Arts Centre BC Days), contemporary Dance productions (Mascall Dance Company, Moving Dragon Dance, Off Centre Dance Company), to large-scale opera and multi-media productions (Generation X – The Opera, Triaspora).

Michael is best known for his work developing a unique method of speech melody composition based upon the manipulations of pre-recorded text fragments, as well as the use of mixed live and pre-recorded media. His most noted projects include collaborations with the Juno award nominated Orchid Ensemble, plunderphonics composer John Oswald, and famed author Douglas Coupland. He has also shared bills with Richard Reed Parry (Arcade Fire), Laurie Anderson, Paul Lansky, Joan La Barbara, Barry Truax, Trevor Wishart, and Pamala Z.

As one of Canada’s youngest and most vocal proponents of contemporary classical music, Michael’s compositions are performed frequently throughout Canada (National Arts Centre, Chan Centre For the Performing Arts, Royal Ontario Museum) as well as internationally (Porto Portugal, Houstan Texas, Santa Fe New Mexico, Wisconsin and Hong Kong).

His works have been performed by Orchestre de la Francophonie Canadienne, the Orchid Ensemble, Ensemble Symposium, TorQ Percussion Quartet, Quatuor Bozzini, BradyWorks, Wire Ensemble, Clemens Merkel, Isabelle Bozzini, Colin MacDonald, Steven Parker, Satomi Tozawa, Barbara Adler, Brendan McLeod, RC Weslowski, and others. His works have been broadcast nationally on CBC In Concert, CBC Radio Two, CKUT 90.3 fm (Montreal), CHUO 89.1 fm (Ottawa), CFRO, 102.7 FM and CiTR 101.9 FM (Vancouver).

In 2003, he was honoured with the Allan Award in Electroacoustic composition, in 2004, the Simon Fraser University Arts Service Award, and most recently an honorable mention at the 2012 Karen Keiser Prize in Canadian Music. Michael holds advanced degrees from Simon Fraser University and the University of Toronto, where his teachers included Christos Hatzis, James Rolfe, Barry Truax, and David MacIntyre. He has also studied with Grammy award winning composers Osvaldo Golijov and Roberto Sierra.

In addition to his work as a composer, Michael is also a published author (Playing With Words, 2008) and editor for Canada’s largest classical music magazine’s La Scena Musicale. Michael lives in Toronto, Ontario and is currently working towards his doctorate in music composition at the University of Toronto on a full scholarship under Christos Hatzis.

February, 2010

For more information please visit The Canadian Music Centre and Wikipedia.