Michael Henry is a composer, sound designer and performer who currently resides in the San Francisco bay area. Michael holds an undergraduate degree in Horn performance from the University of Missouri-Kansas City conservatory of Music, and a Masters in Music composition from Northwestern University. He studied composition with Raymond Luedeke, Gerald Kemner, and Alan Stout. He has also participated in master classes with composer/conductor Pierre Boulez, and a Carnegie Hall composer’s workshop with composer Luciano Berio.

Among his recent works are many collaborative efforts with noted sound artist Dwight Frizzell. These include a recently revised version of Sonic Force for A-10 Warthogs, Helicopters, Foley Artists, and Ensemble, which was presented at the National Audio Theatre Workshop in 2007. In 2005 the NewEar contemporary music ensemble of Kansas City Missouri, premiered H for Thermonuclear Device and Remote Chamber Ensemble, which features a B61 Mod11 thermonuclear gravity bomb on stage as soloist along with a chamber ensemble located in a simulated bomb shelter, projected into the performance space via video and multichannel spatial sound feeds. New Ear also presented the one-act monodrama Out of Time in 1997; and they premiered  his Quatre Poemes d'Henri Michaux for soprano and chamber orchestra in 1996.

When he is not composing concert music or collaborating with sonic artist Dwight Frizzell in their noble effort to re-purpose military technology for peaceful artistic uses, he likes to eat. Thus he relocated to the bay area in 1998, to take a position with the legendary Atari Games as a composer and sound designer. Among the many game titles he has worked on, his favorites are Midway’s Dr. Muto and Atari’s San Francisco Rush 2049 series of racing games. He is currently employed at Cryptic Studios working on a massively multiplayer online game based on the Champions RPG Superhero franchise, Champions Online. Michael also consults with technology companies and has done interface sound design for Palm PDAs, cellphones, and Intel multimedia applications.

Michael’s CV is available here.

Media reviews of his concert work and audio for computer games are available here.