Troyjam 8.3.08 / @ Kuumbwa 8.4.08

Michael Daugherty b. 1954, Cedar Rapids, Iowa

Michael Daugherty is one of the most colorful and widely performed American composers on the concert music scene today. He has been hailed by The Times (London) as “a master icon maker” with a “maverick imagination, fearless structural sense and meticulous ear”. Daugherty first came to international attention in the 1990s with a series of witty, dark-humored, brilliantly-scored pieces inspired by 20th-century pop-culture phenomena such as his Metropolis Symphony. His idiom bears the stamp of classic modernism, with colliding tonalities and blocks of sound; at the same time, his melodies can be eloquent and stirring. Daugherty’s works for orchestra, wind ensemble and symphony band, opera, and chamber ensemble are rich with cultural and political allusions, and have been performed by major conductors and ensembles around the world.

Born in 1954 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Daugherty is the son of a dance-band drummer and the oldest of five brothers, all professional musicians. He studied music composition at the University of North Texas (1972-76) and Manhattan School of Music (1976-78 computer music at Boulez's IRCAM in Paris (1979-80). Daugherty received his doctorate from Yale University in 1986 where his teachers included Jacob Druckman, Earle Brown, Roger Reynolds, and Bernard Rands. During this time he also collaborated with jazz arranger Gil Evans in New York, and pursued further studies with composer Gyorgy Ligeti in Hamburg, Germany (1982-84). After teaching music composition from 1986-1990 at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Daugherty joined the School of Music at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) in 1991, where he is Professor of Composition.

Daugherty has received numerous awards for his music including the Stoeger Prize from the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society, the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and fellowships the National Endowment for the Arts, Fulbright and Guggenheim Foundations. He has been the Composer-in-Residence with the Louisville Symphony Orchestra (2000), Detroit Symphony Orchestra (1999-2003), Colorado Symphony Orchestra (2001-2002), Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music (2001-04, 2007-08), Westshore Symphony Orchestra (2005-06), Eugene Symphony (2006), and the Henry Mancini Institute (2006). He was named by the Delaware Symphony Orchestra as the winner of the 2007 A. I. duPont Award and was also named ‘Outstanding Classical Composer’ at the 2007 Detroit Music Awards. Michael Daugherty’s music is published by Boosey & Hawkes and Peermusic Classical.