Michael Compitello, percussion
Photo by Matt Fried
Percussionist Michael Compitello is guided by his passion to create new art through collaborations with composers, performers, actors, and artists in all mediums. Currently Director of Percussion at Cornell University, Compitello has worked with composers Helmut Lachenmann, Nicolaus A. Huber, David Lang, John Luther Adams, Alejandro Viñao, Marc Applebaum, and Martin Bresnick on premieres and performances of new works and has performed as a chamber musician and soloist with the Ensemble Modern, the International Ensemble Modern Academy, and with members of the Bang on a Can All-Stars, Eighth Blackbird, and So Percussion. Michael has appeared in diverse locations such as the Darmstadt Summer Course, the LA Phil’s Green Umbrella Series, the International Festival of Arts and Ideas, the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, and the Kurt Weill Festival.
From 2009 to 2010, Compitello performed and studied contemporary chamber music with the Ensemble Modern and the International Ensemble Modern Academy in Frankfurt, Germany on a Fulbright Grant from the US Department of State. He attended the New Music Workshop of the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival in 2006 and 2009, was a fellow at the Bang on a Can All-Stars Summer Music Institute in 2006 and 2007, and in 2009 attended the Banff Centre’s “Roots and Rhizomes” percussion residency.
As an orchestral musician, Compitello has performed with the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra, and the Aspen Festival Orchestra and with conductors Pierre Boulez, Marin Alsop, Reinbert de Leeuw, David Zinman, James Conlon, Brad Lubman, and Gustav Meier.
Compitello’s interest in interdisciplinary collaboration has led to performances at the Yale Repertory Theater and Yale Cabaret, where he helped create “Basement Hades,” a multimedia musical drama featuring his duo New Morse Code, composer Dan Schlosberg, students from the Yale School of Drama, and director Ethan Heard. Compitello’s belief in the important role of classical music in contemporary culture has led him to a variety of outreach projects, including “Naturpassage,” a multi-medium project with the members of the Ensemble Modern in Frankfurt’s Bettinaschule, directed by Paul Griffiths and Fraser Trainer. He has also worked with the Yale School of Music’s acclaimed outreach programs, working with grade- and middle-school students in both the “Music and Book Writing” and “Music and Creative Writing” projects, where students used a new composition as inspiration for writing a multi-chapter story.
A student of Robert van Sice, Compitello earned an MM and MMA from the Yale School of Music, and a BM from the Peabody Conservatory. He was Interim Lecturer in Percussion at UMass Amherst in the fall of 2012.
For more information, visit:
newmorsecode.com
percussion.music.cornell.edu
Mr. Compitello will perform in John Luther Adams’ The Immeasurable Space of Tones for the festival’s first concert on Thursday, March 5, will give the premiere performance of James Wood’s Dialogues for solo marimba on the Friday, March 6, and will perform in John Luther Adams’s songbirdsongs at Cornell Plantations on Sunday, March 8.
From 2009 to 2010, Compitello performed and studied contemporary chamber music with the Ensemble Modern and the International Ensemble Modern Academy in Frankfurt, Germany on a Fulbright Grant from the US Department of State. He attended the New Music Workshop of the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival in 2006 and 2009, was a fellow at the Bang on a Can All-Stars Summer Music Institute in 2006 and 2007, and in 2009 attended the Banff Centre’s “Roots and Rhizomes” percussion residency.
As an orchestral musician, Compitello has performed with the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra, and the Aspen Festival Orchestra and with conductors Pierre Boulez, Marin Alsop, Reinbert de Leeuw, David Zinman, James Conlon, Brad Lubman, and Gustav Meier.
Compitello’s interest in interdisciplinary collaboration has led to performances at the Yale Repertory Theater and Yale Cabaret, where he helped create “Basement Hades,” a multimedia musical drama featuring his duo New Morse Code, composer Dan Schlosberg, students from the Yale School of Drama, and director Ethan Heard. Compitello’s belief in the important role of classical music in contemporary culture has led him to a variety of outreach projects, including “Naturpassage,” a multi-medium project with the members of the Ensemble Modern in Frankfurt’s Bettinaschule, directed by Paul Griffiths and Fraser Trainer. He has also worked with the Yale School of Music’s acclaimed outreach programs, working with grade- and middle-school students in both the “Music and Book Writing” and “Music and Creative Writing” projects, where students used a new composition as inspiration for writing a multi-chapter story.
A student of Robert van Sice, Compitello earned an MM and MMA from the Yale School of Music, and a BM from the Peabody Conservatory. He was Interim Lecturer in Percussion at UMass Amherst in the fall of 2012.
For more information, visit:
newmorsecode.com
percussion.music.cornell.edu
Mr. Compitello will perform in John Luther Adams’ The Immeasurable Space of Tones for the festival’s first concert on Thursday, March 5, will give the premiere performance of James Wood’s Dialogues for solo marimba on the Friday, March 6, and will perform in John Luther Adams’s songbirdsongs at Cornell Plantations on Sunday, March 8.
