Michael Daugherty has created a niche in the music world that is uniquely his own, composing concert music inspired by contemporary American popular culture. His music has been performed by prominent orchestras and ensembles in the United States, such as the Los Angeles and New York Philharmonic, the symphony orchestras of Chicago, Cleveland, San Francisco, and the Kronos Quartet. Performances abroad include the Melbourne Symphony, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonia Orchestra, Tonhalle Orchester Zurich, the Ensemble Intercontemporaine, the London Sinfonietta, and the Netherlands Wind Ensemble.
He was a Fulbright Fellow in Paris, composing computer music at Boulez’s IRCAM (1979-80), and at Yale University (1980-82) he studied with composers Earle Brown, Jacob Druckman, Bernard Rands, and Roger Reynolds. Daugherty moved to Amsterdam to pursue further studies with Gyorgy Ligeti in Hamburg, Germany (1982-4). He received his doctorate degree in music composition from Yale University in 19856, and came to national attentionas a composer when Snap! (1987) won a Kennedy Center Friedheim Award. After teaching composition several years at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Daugherty joined the music composition faculty at the University of Michigan in 1991.