Michelle Nagai

SCORE: Words

Composer MICHELLE NAGAI creates music for people, places and things. She has been doing this on her own and in collaboration with other artists —in music, dance, video and theater —since the late 1990s. In tandem with her work as a composer, Nagai’s published writing reflects a deep engagement with the intersection of words, sounds, places and ideas. In 2011, Michelle lived in rural Japan, the recipient of a creative artist fellowship from the Japan-United States Friendship Commission. She now resides in rural New York State, where she continues to explore connections between sound and place. Nagai’s work has been presented in North America, Japan and Europe with the support of institutions including the American Composers Forum, Deep Listening Institute, Harvestworks, Eye-beam, the Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art, Nature and Dance, the Jerome Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, Meet the Composer, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts. Michelle has been a Deep Listening certificate holder since 2005.