41 Facts About Michael Daugherty

Michael Kevin Daugherty was born on April 28,1954 and is a multiple Grammy Award-winning American composer, pianist, and teacher.

Michael Daugherty is influenced by popular culture, Romanticism, and Postmodernism.

Michael Daugherty was born into a musical family on April 28,1954, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Michael Daugherty's father Willis Daugherty was a jazz and country and western drummer, his mother Evelyn Daugherty was an amateur singer, and his grandmother Josephine Daugherty was a pianist for silent film.

At the age of 8, Michael Daugherty taught himself how to play piano by pumping the pedals of the player piano and watching how piano keys moved to Tin Pan Alley tunes such as "Alexander's Ragtime Band".

The record collection at the Michael Daugherty home consisted mainly of 'easy listening music' of the fifties and music from Broadway theatre.

From 1963 to 1967 Michael Daugherty played bass drum in the Emerald Knights and tom-toms in the Grenadier Drum and Bugle Corps where he competed against other Drum and Bugle Corps throughout small Midwestern towns.

From 1968 to 1972, Michael Daugherty was the leader, arranger, and organist for his high school rock, soul, and funk band, The Soul Company.

Michael Daugherty interviewed jazz artists who performed in Iowa, including Buddy Rich, Stan Kenton, George Shearing, and Rahsaan Roland Kirk, and he wrote articles on their music for the high school newspaper.

Michael Daugherty studied music composition and jazz at the University of North Texas College of Music from 1972 to 1976.

Michael Daugherty played jazz piano in the Two O'Clock Lab Band.

In 1974, conductor Anshel Brusilow programmed a new work with the University of North Texas Symphony Orchestra, Michael Daugherty was 20 years of age.

Michael Daugherty received a Bachelor of Music degree in Composition from North Texas State University in 1976.

That same year, Michael Daugherty moved to New York City to experience the exploding new music scene.

Michael Daugherty frequently attended "uptown" and "downtown" new music concerts in New York City; this is where he became acquainted with composers such as Milton Babbitt, Morton Feldman, and Pierre Boulez.

In 1978, Boulez, then the Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, invited Michael Daugherty to apply to his recently opened computer music institute in Paris: IRCAM.

In Paris, Michael Daugherty had the opportunity to hear contemporary music by the leading European composers of the time performed by the Ensemble l'Itineraire and Boulez's Ensemble InterContemporain.

Michael Daugherty attended analysis classes given by Betsy Jolas at the Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique de Paris.

Michael Daugherty studied with Druckman and other Pulitzer Prize winning composers at Yale, including Bernard Rands and Roger Reynolds.

Michael Daugherty studied improvisational notation systems and open form with experimental music composer Earle Brown.

At Yale, Michael Daugherty wrote his dissertation on the relationship between the music of Charles Ives and Gustav Mahler and the writings of Goethe and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Michael Daugherty worked closely on this dissertation with John Kirkpatrick, who was the curator of the Ives Collection at Yale and gave the 1938 premiere of Ives' Piano Sonata No 2: Concord Sonata.

Michael Daugherty continued his interest in jazz where he worked with Willie Ruff and directed the Yale Jazz Ensemble.

Michael Daugherty helped Evans organize his music manuscripts and complete projects.

One year later, in the summer of 1982, Michael Daugherty traveled to Germany to attend the Darmstadter Ferienkurse.

Michael Daugherty attended lectures given by composers, including Brian Ferneyhough and Karlheinz Stockhausen, and performances by the Arditti String Quartet.

At Darmstadt, Michael Daugherty became friends with Karlheinz's son, the trumpet player Markus Stockhausen.

Michael Daugherty met Nancarrow in Graz, Austria, when Ligeti introduced Nancarrow and his music to the European intelligentsia at the 1982 ISCM World Music Days.

Michael Daugherty is an educator of young composers and advocate for contemporary music.

Michael Daugherty organized the 1988 Electronic Festival Plus Festival, which took place at Oberlin and featured music from over 50 composers.

Handy composition "Harlem Blues", Byrd asked Michael Daugherty to arrange it for a commercial recording made at the Van Gelder Studio located in Englewood Cliffs, NJ for the Landmark label, with Michael Daugherty playing synthesizers.

In 1991, Michael Daugherty was invited to join the composition faculty at the University of Michigan School of Music.

Michael Daugherty was co-chair of the composition department with composer William Bolcom from 1998 to 2001, and chair of the department from 2002 to 2006.

Michael Daugherty has composed new works, including Niagara Falls and Bells for Stokowski, for the University of Michigan Symphony Band and its two most recent conductors, H Robert Reynolds and Michael Haithcock.

Michael Daugherty has served as a final judge for the Broadcast Music Incorporated Student Composers Awards, the Gaudeamus International Composers Competition, and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra's Elaine Lebenborn Award for Female Composers.

Michael Daugherty has been a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts and Meet the Composer.

Michael Daugherty has served as a composer mentor for reading sessions of young composers' music by organizations such as the American Composers Orchestra, Minnesota Composers Orchestra, Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, Omaha Symphony, and the Young Composers Institute in Apeldoorn.

In 2001, Michael Daugherty was invited to present his music with performances by the United States Air Force Band at the Midwest Clinic "The Midnight Special" in Chicago.

Michael Daugherty has participated in the Ravinia Festival Community Outreach program which is designed to promote and encourage new music by student ensembles in the Chicago Public Schools.

Also in 2007, Michael Daugherty was named "Outstanding Classical Composer" at the Detroit Music Awards and received the American Bandmasters Association Ostwald Award for his composition Raise the Roof for Timpani and Symphonic Band.

Michael Daugherty received several Grammy awards in the category of Best Contemporary Classical Composition for the Nashville Symphony recordings of Deus ex Machina and Tales of Hemingway for cello and orchestra.