Born in London, Michael studied in the UK and USA at the University of Leeds and University of North Texas College of Music. He was awarded the Dixon scholarship for the MA in Vocal Studies at York, graduating with distinction. After a period living and working in France with Emmanuelle Haim and other French baroque and contemporary music specialists, he continued postgraduate studies with Adrian Thompson at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and is an alumnus of the Britten-Pears Young Artists programme at Aldeburgh.

 

As a solo, chorus, consort and session singer he has worked frequently with groups such as the Academy of Ancient Music, The English Concert, London Voices, Monteverdi Choir and Dunedin Consort, as well as with leading European groups Le Concert d’Astrée, Les Eléments, Stradivaria, Ensemble Matheus, Musicatreize and Le Cercle d’Harmonie. Concert and opera work has taken him to most of the major UK venues and the major opera houses and concert halls of Europe.

 

In the studio he has recorded soundtracks for film and TV and appeared regularly on BBC Radio 3 and 4. Extensive experience as a vocal coach and conductor has included training and inspiring vocal groups and choruses of all sizes from community choirs to opera choruses, choral societies, jazz vocal groups and more, including massed choirs of four hundred people for Common & Kind and teaching undergraduates at the University of Southampton and Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts. A noted exponent of lute song, he is a founder member of Dowland Works with Dame Emma Kirkby and teaches on the Lute Song courses at Benslow Music with Jacob Heringman and Clare Wilkinson. Michael founded original flamenco fusion project Poniente, and original English secular song band, for which he has written and arranged original music on texts ranging from Shakespeare to Nick Drake.

 

A firm believer in the extraordinary power of music to change lives through its effect on individuals and communities, Michael founded Common and Kind in 2016, writing the international single Human Kind and bringing together leading artists from across the musical spectrum with massed partnerships between groups of all ages and backgrounds in workshops and spectacular collaborative concerts. He is recipient of the Audrey and Stanley Burton PhD Scholarship at the University of Leeds, researching the impact of Wilfrid Mellers on music education and society, working with archive material at the Borthwick Institute at the University of York.