Michael Byron (born September 7, 1953 is an American composer and
editor of contemporary music anthologies. In 1971, he met, and began studying with
James Tenney, at the newly built California Institute of the Arts. At around the
same time, he was introduced to Harold Budd, and Richard Teitelbaum (two lifelong
musical friends), and soon thereafter Lou Harrison, Dane Rudhyar, and Robert Ashley.
During the halcyon days of the early 1970s, his music—its compositional
trajectory—was one of extreme reductionism. In 1973, he moved from Los Angeles to
Toronto to study with Richard Teitelbaum at York University. For reasons unrelated
to the geographical change, the allure of reductive music passed as quickly as it
had come. In the winter of 1973-1974, he began composing Starfields, for piano four
hands. Starfields was his first work using an ergodic form, and stochastic processes
adhering to the principle of multiplicity. Byron also began the publishing
experiment, Pieces, a series of anthologies devoted to the increased dissemination
and visibility of radical directions in music. He later served on the Board of
Directors of the Aesthetic Research Center of Canada, where he edited The Journal of
Experimental Aesthetics. In 1975, along with visual artist Jackie Humbert, composer
David Rosenboom, and filmmaker George Manupelli he co-founded the multidisciplinary
performance-art group, Maple Sugar. Finally, in the winter of 1976-1977, with the
encouragement of composer Lou Harrison, he moved permanently to New York City.
There, he composed prolifically, but also worked on the periphery of the art
rock/punk/noise works with Rhys Chatham and others, in lower Manhattan’s club scene.
In 1979, he was hired by the DIA Art Foundation to work as assistant to La Monte
Young. Over the last four decades, working independently, Byron has created a
rigorous body of work marked by extreme polyrhythmic complexity, and intricate
contrapuntal textures that have become a hallmark of his style. This music is
exclusively virtuosic. His music has been recorded on New World Records, Cold Blue
Music, Meridian Records, Poon Village Records, Neutral Records, Tellus, Koch
Records, and Bandcamp. His scores are published, and distributed by Frog Peak Music.
