I am compelled to write a rich, messy kind of music, packed with illusions and allusions, impressions and expressions. I want to bathe the listener in a hard-edged, driving interplay of meaning.

Biography

Michael Norris is a Wellington-based composer. He holds composition degrees from Victoria University of Wellington and City University, London. He has held the positions of Composer-in-Residence with the Southern Sinfonia and the Mozart Fellowship, and currently lectures in composition at the New Zealand School of Music. In 2003, Michael won the Douglas Lilburn Prize, a nationwide competition for orchestral composers. He is also co-founder and co-director of Stroma New Music Ensemble. He has participated in composition courses featuring leading composers such as Peter Eötvös, Alvin Lucier, Christian Wolff and Kaija Saariaho.

Recent composition projects include ‘Heavy Traffic’, commissioned by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, featuring contrabassoonist Hamish McKeich, tesserae:interstices for members of the Luxembourg Philharmonic, and ‘Icons & Artifice’, for bass clarinet duo, ensemble and live electronics, premiered by Stroma with the Duo Stump-Linshalm (Austria). He spent the second half of 2007 living and working in Vienna, where he initiated a number of projects with European performers.

Selected Works

• Publications (5)
• Works (34)
• Awards (6)
• Related Resources (1)