Michael Edward Edgerton

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Michael Edward Edgerton (born October 31, 1961, in Racine, Wisconsin) is an American composer and associate professor of music composition and theory at Guangxi Arts University.

He earned a Doctor of Musical Arts in composition from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1994, a Master of Music from Michigan State University in 1987, and a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin–Parkside in 1984. From 1996 to 1999, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the National Center for Voice and Speech, based at the Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin–Madison. He studied composition with William Brooks, Morgan Powell, Jere Hutcheson, and August Wegner.

Since the mid-1990s Edgerton has explored innovative ways to produce sound by coordinating multiple parts of a mechanical system—power, source, resonance, and articulation—using desynchronized, multidimensional approaches. He uses ideas from topology to investigate less-charted areas of sound and to create perceptible differences in tone, aiming for sound that is complex and expressive rather than merely unusual. His work has been described as part of the New Complexity movement.

Edgerton is a specialist in the extra-normal voice, working as a composer, teacher, researcher, and performer. His vocal work, for both traditional and extended techniques, investigates the bio-acoustic limits of human voice, including nonlinear phenomena and the simultaneous use of multiple sound sources in the vocal tract. He draws inspiration from traditional vocal practices around the world, including Tuva, Tibet, South Africa, Korea, and India. Representative vocal works include Cataphora, A Marriage of Shadows, prana, Anaphora, Friedrich’s Comma, and Taffy Twisters.

As a teacher, Edgerton focuses on healthy voice development (bel canto-based) while expanding the range of possible vocal sounds. He offers individual lessons and workshops and has written about voice exploration, including The 21st Century Voice, chapters in forthcoming handbooks, and collections of pedagogical compositions focused on the extra-normal voice.

In 1995 Edgerton contributed to a book on extended vocal techniques and received a three-year postdoctoral fellowship to study voice science, under Diane Bless. This work led to articles and the book The 21st Century Voice. He also performs contemporary and ethnically influenced vocal music and improvises with other artists. He collaborated on a CD of improvised performances of The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe, in three translations, with Frédérique Bruyas, titled the raven/le Corbeau edgar Poe. His work spans orchestras, opera and music theater, chamber ensembles, solo performances, choirs, and electronic media.