Michael Norris

Caprice Arts Trust Foundation Artist - Composer

Michael 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.

Future composition projects include a new work for the New Zealand String Quartet, a solo work for Richard Haynes, and a new work for the 2010 Donaueschinger Musiktage, to be performed by the Radio Chamber Orchestra Hilversum, under Peter Eötvös.