MichaelBerger

Michael Berger

Redwood City

Canadian composer, MICHAEL BERGER was born in April of 1980. In 2001, after two years of preliminary study at Kwantlen University College in Langley, British Columbia, Michael transferred to the University of Victoria where he studied with Christopher Butterfield to obtain his Bachelor of Music in Composition and Theory in 2005. Michael has completed his Master of Music Composition in 2007 at the University of Alberta with the support of funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (S.S.H.R.C.). There he studied with Drs. Howard Bashaw, Andriy Talpash, and Mark Hannesson. In the Fall of 2007 Michael began studies in the Doctor of Musical Arts in Composition program at Stanford University with Dr. Mark Applebaum with renewed funding from the S.S.H.R.C. and a full scholarship from the school. In addition to his DMA work at Stanford, Michael completed a Master of Arts in Music, Science, and Technology (MA/MST) in June of 2010. Michael received his DMA in 2012 after working with Drs. Mark Applebaum, Brian Ferneyhough, Jaroslaw Kapuscinski, and Erik Ulman. Currently Michael works at Smule in San Francisco where he leads the team of composers and arrangers who produce all of the musical arrangements into all of Smule's apps (Magic Piano, Sing! Karaoke, Guitar!, and AutoRap). Michael looks at music as an art of time through one’s experience of sound and memory. An important aspect to his subsequent approach to composition is his attention to both the innately physical nature of sound and its production, and the energies that go into and come out of that production. Additionally, Michael’s music is also often informed by extra-musical concepts, issues, and ideas. In past works, these have included: religious extremism, universal continuum, arbitrariness, epistemology, and death and identity. Michael began his musical training in elementary school with study of the ukulele and later the trumpet and doublebass. He continued on these instruments together with voice through high school and participated in various extracurricular ensembles. In college and university Michael focused instrumentally on trumpet, studying with Tom Shorthouse (1999-2001) and Lou Ranger (2001-2004). After many years of dabbling, Michael received his first formal classes in composition at the University of Victoria with Michael Longton in 2001. Excited by the field, he applied and was accepted to be a composition major at the end of that year. Similarly in 2002, Michael had his first real exposure to the idiom of electroacoustics and immediately became fascinated by it. During his undergraduate degree Michael was fortunate to work with many talented and gifted artists (both teachers and fellow students) including Dr. W. Andrew Schloss, Dr. John Celona, Dr. Dániel Péter Biró, Trimpin, Gordon Mumma, Dr. Gerald King, David Cecchetto, Adam Tindale, Kirk McNally and many others. In 2006 Michael was one of six participants in the Quatuor Bozzini’s “composer’s kitchen,” a week long workshop dealing with composition for string quartet held annually in Montréal, QC. He also had the opportunity to meet with and have a piece read by the Ensemble Contemporain de Montréal in October of that year. In the summer of 2007 Michael was one of three composers from across Canada to participate in Arraymusic’s 21st annual “Young Composers’ Workshop” in Toronto, ON. In 2008 he completed a commission from the Ensemble Contemporain de Montréal as one of four participants in their “Génération 2008” Canadian tour. Michael then completed a piece for the Freiburg-based Ensemble Sur Plus that was performed in March of 2009 at Stanford University and in Freiburg in July of the same year. He is presently completing a solo Clarinet piece for his friend Heather Roche. In 2009-2010 Michael served as "Composer in Residence" for the Stanford University Philharmonic Orchestra under the directorship of Prof. Jindong Cai. Michael will complete a work for the ensemble for its premiere in Fall 2010. Michael's final project piece and dissertation paper "That Is Only A Mirror..." was composed and premiered in 2012 in Stanford, CA by the Talea Ensemble (New York). The piece and dissertation explore ideas of identity in an environment of constant change and reflection.