Composition Colloquium: Michael Frazier

Michael Frazier is a Black and Latino composer specializing in acoustic, electronic, and electroacoustic music who is invested in exploring a musical language that has a connection to a broader history of Black creative artistry. Heavily influenced and inspired by his love of jazz and hip-hop music, Frazier’s compositional style incorporates a dense, expansive tonal language juxtaposed with freer approaches to melody and structural organization, often born in the expression of musical improvisation in various forms. At the forefront, Frazier’s music relies on gesture, harmony, slowness, and patience.

Beyond composition, Frazier’s interests in music and sound include the unique and personal expression of one’s musical voice, engagement with topics and aesthetics outside one’s musical familiarity or awareness, and the capacity for a music that can be approached by listeners of all backgrounds. Additionally, Frazier has a strong passion for forward-thinking music-making and creativity that acknowledges and embraces one’s cultural identity, especially those of historically underrepresented groups.

Frazier’s music has been widely performed and presented by groups such as Strings & Hammers, OSSIA New Music, Musica Nova, Trio Alexander, Musique 21, Detroit Chamber Winds & Strings, and Birds on a Wire, and has been featured in venues around the world.

He has also adjudicated composition competitions including the America Viola Society’s Maurice Gardner Composition Competition, the Bowling Green State University Competitions in Composition and Music Performance, and the Local 4 Music Fund “She Scores” 2023.

Frazier earned a master’s degree and PhD in music composition at the Eastman School of Music, where he was also the recipient of numerous awards in composition, including the Howard Hanson Ensemble Prize and the Wayne Brewster Barlow Prize.

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