Michele Selvaggi is a five-time SOCAN Foundation Award Winning, Italian-Canadian composer of electroacoustic and experimental concert music living in Evanston, IL, USA.
With “a compositional approach that is nourished by a special sonic apparatus” (Percorsi Musicali), Michele is concerned deeply with the physiological experience of sound, driven by their own confrontation with time’s passage. Their work is coloured from earlier engagement in natural sciences, resulting in noisy topographies shaded by demanding anxiety and OCD.
Michele has received commissions from and collaborates with organizations across Europe and North America, including loadbang, Westside Chamber Players, CIRMMT, Nouvelle Ensemble Moderne, SWR Symphonieorchester, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, impuls Festival, UdK Berlin, Museum Tinguely, CEAM, MCME, New Music Concerts, and the Eastman School of Music.
Michele has been the recipient of over 25 awards and prizes including a Fromm Foundation Composer Fellowship, the 2025 Eduard Brunner Composition Prize at the Musik-Akademie Basel, CEC’s Micheline Coulombe Saint-Marcoux Award, and the Residency Prix CIME 2021. Their music has been included in the 2024 Canadian Section’s official submission to ISCM World Music Days, and led to nomination for a 2021 Rhodes Scholarship.
As of recent, Michele has developed research into “sonic entropy”, culminating in a prize-winning thesis on Entropic Drift in musical systems at the Musik-Akademie Basel, featuring a series of feedback works supported by Fondation Nicati – de Luze.
Michele holds a Bachelor of Music Composition from the University of Toronto, as well as a Master and Postgraduate in Music Composition from the Musik-Akademie Basel. Michele is currently pursuing a PhD in Music Composition and Technology at Northwestern University under the guidance of Kelley Sheehan. They have studied primarily with Norbert Palej, James Rolfe, Bekah Simms, Darren Copeland, Johannes Kreidler, Casper Johannes Walter, and Volker Böhm, as well as taken lessons and masterclasses with Raven Chacon, Clara Iannotta, Chaya Czernowin, Francesco Filidei, Pierluigi Billone, Mark Andre, Stefan Prins, Vladimir Rannev, Martin Matalon, Luxa M. Schüttler, and Joanna Bailie.