Michael Schachter

From Wind Repertory Project
Michael Schachter

Biography

Michael Schachter (b. 1987, Boston, Mass.) is an American composer, pianist, scholar and educator.

Born and raised in New England, Michael spent his formative years immersed in omnivorous musical activity: absorbing the strains of Jewish cantillation, performing piano concerti, leading jazz combos, accompanying musicals and gospel groups, conducting Renaissance choral music, and studying Southeast Indian classical (Karnatak) music in Chennai. His work — composition, writing, and teaching alike — reflects a uniquely broad versatility and depth of humanist inquiry. He is a 2009 BA music graduate from Harvard, MA in composition from Michigan (2012), and expects to complete a Ph.D. in composition and music theory from Michigan in 2019.

As a scholar, Michael’s research interests include the philosophy of music (especially aesthetics, epistemology, and ethics), pedagogy, early music, jazz, New Orleans music, and the classical music of South India. Current projects include a monograph on musical epistemology (the philosophy of musical knowledge). His scholarly articles have been published in journals such as the Society for Music Theory’s online journal Music Theory Online, The Indiana Theory Review, and Music and Literature, and he has presented his work at regional and national conferences. In March 2016, Michael gave the keynote address at the Bowling Green State University Graduate Conference.

In recent years, Michael’s music has been commissioned and performed by ensembles such as the Minnesota Orchestra, the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra, the Boise Philharmonic, the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, the Naples Philharmonic Orchestra, Alarm Will Sound, the 21st Century Consort (the resident new music ensemble of the Smithsonian institution), the Brentano Quartet, the Concord Chorus and Orchestra, the Masterworks Chorale and Orchestra, the Vocal Essence Ensemble Singers, the New York Virtuoso Singers, the Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra, and chamber groups and collegiate ensembles around the country. His works have received honors from organizations such as BMI, ASCAP, and the American Composers Forum.

Highlights of the 2017–18 season include premieres with the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra, a consortium of wind ensembles led by the University of Michigan, and saxophonist Emmett Rapaport; the unveiling of a new dramatic theater piece Were You There with Davóne Tines, which will feature at New York’s Resonant Bodies Festival and at the American Modern Opera Company’s residency at the American Repertory Theater; and additional performances at the 2017 Ojai Festival, the National Flute Association’s national conference, and by groups such as the Bloomington Symphony, Occasional Symphony, and EnsembleNewSRQ.

Michael spent the 2009-2010 academic year in Chennai, India studying South Indian classical singing and vina playing. While living in Chennai, Michael and his wife, Allie, lived and worked at an NGO that provides a wide array of human services, and upon returning to the United States they started a non-profit organization that sponsors education and living expenses for child victims of human trafficking.


Works for Winds


Resources